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Book 



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Evolution and 
Modern Thought 



J$ E. Robinson 



Bloomington, Illinois 



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Copyright 1917 

By J. E. ROBINSON 

Bloomington, 111. 






LC Control Number 

Mil 

tmp96 027358 



CONTENTS 

Introduction ,...* 5 

Chapter 1 — Origin and Evolution of Man 13 

Chapter 2— History of the Bible 26 

Chapter 3— The Great Age of the Bible Stories 47 

Chapter 4 — Is There a Devil and is He the Author of 

Evil 58 

Chapter 5 — Is Satan a Factor in the Affairs of this 

World 91 

Chapter 6 — Demons and Evil Spirits 103 

Chapter 7 — Superstitions 1 16 

Chapter 8— The Origin of the Fall Story 122 

Chapter 9 — Origin of the Story in Genesis 131 

Chapter 10 — God's Way of Doing Things 152 

Chapter 11 — Does God Send Trouble 168 

Chapter 12 — Christ's Attitude 177 

Chapter 13— Miracles 183 

Chapter 14 — The Unseen World 196 

Chapter 15 — Heaven and Hell 203 



Introduction 

THE TITLE that is given to this book does not cover 
the various questions herein discussed. It is the ob- 
ject to present some of the different ecclesiastical and 
doctrinal movements that are being agitated among the bet- 
ter educated classes of thinking men of the present time by 
the lay members of the churches. 

In this age of research and investigation it is becoming 
manifest that the old orthodox treatment of many portions of 
Scripture rests upon speculative presuppositions which are 
now entirely discredited. A critical examination of our 
problems may fairly be expected to render a much needed 
service. It is evident to the man of science, that the ministry, 
in matters where science has the right to pass judgment, are 
too sure that they are right, where the man of science doubts. 
The sense for truth, verity and purity of personal conviction, 
courage and power of disposition, these are the great con- 
sideration of the ministry in modern culture. These quali- 
ties can be developed and matured in a great many cases, 
by encouraging and assisting men to face the known facts 
even at the cost of honest pain, without any harm to our 
Christian faith. To make* religion a problem may be of- 
fensive to many. But thought, once awakened, must have 
the right to investigate everything, and only thought itself 
can draw the bounds to thought. He who has never dis- 
covered any problem, has naturally no reason to think, or 
be troubled about these questions. But such a one has no 



6 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

right to keep others from thinking. Whoever has any fear 
of having his faith weakened let him keep away. It is not 
so much the poor in spirit, that stand in the way, as it is the 
obstinate ministry who raise such a clamor, when free in- 
quiry enters upon its rights to investigate scientific and 
historical truths. As will be seen, the new view of the 
world requires an historical treatment of all human things, 
which is the outcome of the widening of the horizon back- 
ward into the past history of the human race, tracing it down 
through evolution and development to the present. 

It is this movement which has contributed to the shatter- 
ing of the original inborn confidence of every kindred type 
of culture, and system of values, which they held to be 
essential to their own welfare, and should never be broken 
or treated with dishonor. These types have become historical 
objects by the side of others, between which not miracle, 
but only comparison, can yield criterion of their respective 
value. It is this picture of the whole, constructed in part 
by affording a general view of the whole, or of the principal 
part of that imagination, which is a surmise in advance of 
knowledge, and which has been the basis of all judgments 
concerning the rules and ideals, that has governed the 
human race during the long centuries of the past. 

Therefore historical science is the basis of all thought 
concerning values and rules of action, the means of self-re- 
flection on the part of mankind, as regards its nature, its 
origin, and its hopes. If the great masses of the people 
would only stop and think, and use a little common sense in 
their thinking, this new way of looking at things will produce 
effects the consequences of which would affect all future 
appreciations of Christianity. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 7 

Like all great movements of the human spirit, Christianity 
also shares this inborn confidence in its authorized standard, 
thought to be handed down from above. This excuse in 
defense of Christian religion has ever firmly knit together 
this confidence by the blank unmeditated opposition of 
Christianity to all that is non-Christian, depreciating the 
latter to a homogeneous mass of human error, and vice, ex- 
alting the former to immediate divine dignity, accredited as 
such by outer and inner miracle, as will be shown in this 
book. The old position held by all Christians in all ages, is 
that all ecclesiastical history presents absolute truth, proved 
to be such, because miraculously authenticated to be due to 
divine communication. 

We are on this earth to live, in the highest sense of that 
term, and we are guaranteed the freedom of thought, and 
the right to see the truth as it appeals to us, and we grant 
that same privilege to others. Those who are indulging in 
violent attacks on persons holding views different from their 
own are not living up to the spirit of the time in which we 
live, where every one has the right to think, and speak ac- 
cording to the dictates of his own conscience. Church or- 
ganizations do not behave as sanely as the scientists. 

One thing is certain, we shall never gain anything by 
finding fault, or making accusations, or slander against any 
man who has a new truth to propound. We must, on the 
contrary, consider what he has to offer. We must come to 
the new theory with an open mind, and an attitude of jus- 
tice. If we are convinced that the new proposition is better 
than the old, we should accept it. We must be ever ready 
to broaden our minds to new discovered truths if we ever 
make any progress. For knowledge is advanced through 



8 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

the utterances of new opinions, and truth is discovered by 
free discussion? If the utterance of truths flow not in a 
perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of 
conformity and tradition. Books which are authorized 
by the licensers are apt to be, as Bacon said, but the lan- 
guage of the times, and do not contribute to progress. The 
examples of the countries where the censorship is severe, do 
not suggest that it is useful for morals. Look into Italy and 
Spain, whether those places be one scruple the better, the 
honester, the wiser, the chaster, since all the inquisitional 
rigor that hath been executed upon books. Spain indeed 
could reply, We are, what is more important, more orthodox. 
It is interesting to notice that Milton places freedom of 
thought above civil liberty. Give me the liberty to know, to 
utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all 
other liberties. 

It is a common saying that thought is free. A man can 
never be hindered from thinking whatever he chooses, so 
long as he conceals what he thinks. The working of his 
mind is limited only by the bounds of his experience and the 
power of his imagination. But this natural liberty of pri- 
vate thinking is of little value. It is unsatisfactory and even 
painful to the thinker himself, if he is not permitted to com- 
municate his thoughts to others, and it is obviously of no value 
to his neighbors. Moreover it is extremely difficult to hide 
thoughts that have any power over the mind. If a man's 
thinking leads him to call in question ideas and customs 
which regulate the behavior of those about him, to reject be- 
liefs which they hold, to see better ways of life than those 
they follow, it is almost impossible for him, if he is convinced 
of the truth of his own reasoning, not to betray by silence, 
chance words, or general attitude that he is different from 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 9 

them and does not share their opinions. Thus freedom of 
thought, in any valuable sense, includes freedom of speech. 

At present in the most civilized countries, freedom of 
speech is taken as a matter of course and seems a perfectly 
simple thing. We are so accustomed to it that we look on 
it as a natural right. But this right has been acquired only 
in quite recent times, and the way to its attainment has lain 
through lakes of blood. It has taken centuries to persuade 
the most enlightened peoples that liberty to publish one's 
opinions and to discuss all questions is a good and not a bad 
thing. Human societies have been generally opposed to 
freedom of thought, or, in other words, to new ideas, and it 
is easy to see why. Hie average brain is naturally lazy, 
and tends to take the line of least resistance. The mental 
world of the ordinary man consists of beliefs which he has 
accepted without questioning and to which he is firmly at- 
tached; he is instinctively hostile to anything which would 
upset the established order of this familiar world. A new 
idea, inconsistent with some of the beliefs which he holds, 
means the necessity of rearranging his mind ; and this process 
is laborious, requiring a painful expenditure of brain energy. 
To him and his fellows, who form the vast majority, new 
ideas, and opinions which cast doubt on established beliefs 
and institutions, seem evil because they are disagreeable. 

The repugnance due to mere mental laziness is increased 
by a positive feeling of fear. The conservative instinct 
hardens into the conservative doctrine that the foundations 
of society are endangered by any alterations in the struc- 
ture. It is only recently that men have been abandoning 
the belief that the welfare of a state depends on rigid sta- 
bility, and on the preservation of its traditions and institu- 



10 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

tions unchanged. Wherever that belief prevails, novel 
opinions are felt to be dangerous as well as annoying, and 
any one who asks inconvenient questions about the why and 
the wherefore of accepted principles is considered a pesti- 
lent person. 

The conservative instinct, and the conservative doctrine 
which is its consequence, are strengthened by superstition. 
If the social structure, including the whole body of customs 
and opinions, is associated intimately with religious belief 
and is supposed to be under divine patronage, criticism of 
the social order savors of impiety, while criticism of the re- 
ligious belief is a direct challenge to the wrath of super- 
natural powers. 

The psychological motives which produce a conservative 
spirit hostile to new ideas are reinforced by the active oppo- 
sition of a certain powerful section of the community, such as 
a class, a caste, or a priesthood, whose interests are bound up 
with the maintenance of the established order and the ideas 
on which it rests. A long time was needed to arrive at tta 
conclusion that coercion of opinion is a mistake, and only a 
part of the world is yet convinced. That conclusion, so far 
a? I can judge, is the most important ever reached by man. 
It was the issue of a continuous struggle between authority 
and reason. If you ask somebody how he knows something, 
ne may say, I have it on good authority, or, I read it in a 
book, or I learned it at school. Any of these replies means 
that he has accepted information from others, trusting in 
their knowledge, without verifying their statements or think- 
ing the matter out for himself. And the greater part of most 
men's knowledge and beliefs is of this kind, taken without 
verification from their parents, teachers, books, and news- 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 11 

papers. It is obvious that every one's knowledge would be 
very limited indeed, if we were not justified in accepting 
facts on the authority of others. But we are justified only 
under one condition. The facts which we can safely accept 
must be capable of demonstration or verification. 

Now, people at all times have been commanded to accept 
on authority alone — the authority, for instance, of public 
opinion, or a church, or a sacred book — doctrines which 
are not proved or are not capable of proof. Most beliefs 
about nature and man, which were not founded on scientific 
observation, have served directly or indirectly religious and 
social interests, and hence they have been protected by force 
against the criticisms of persons who have the inconvenient 
habit of using their reason. In the Middle Ages a large field 
was covered by beliefs which authority claimed to impose 
as true, and reason was warned off the ground. But reason 
cannot recognize arbitrary prohibitions or barriers, without 
being untrue to herself. Indeed the weakest point in the 
strategical position of authority was that her champions, 
being human, could not help making use of reasoning pro- 
cesses, and the result was that they were divided among 
themselves. It may be objected that there is a legitimate do- 
main for authority, consisting of doctrines which lie outside 
human experience and therefore cannot be proved or verified, 
but at the same time cannot be disproved. Of course, any 
number of propositions can be invented which cannot be 
disproved, and it is open to any one who possesses abundant 
faith to believe them ; but no one will maintain that they all 
deserve credence so long as their falsehood is not demon- 
strated. And if only some deserve credence, who, except 
reason, is to decide which? If the reply is, authority, we are 



12 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

confronted by the difficulty that many beliefs backed by 
authority have been finally disproved and are universally 
abandoned. Yet some people speak as if we were not justi- 
fied in rejecting a theological doctrine unless we can prove 
it false. But the burden of proof does not lie upon the re- 
jecter. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 13 



Chapter I 
Origin and Evolution of Man 

AS FAR back as we can trace the history of man, from 
the very earliest times in all the earliest nations of 
the earth that had made any progress in scientific 
research, men have endeavored to answer the question, 
What is man, where did he come from, and whither is he 
bound? He has ever busied himself by piecing together the 
little bits of information accessible to him in order to make 
up some kind of a satisfactory answer. In their day the 
methods that they used for this purpose seem to us to be 
very crude, and undoubtedly ancient philosophers bungled 
considerably in their effort to reach the truth. Accordingly 
primitive men were very wide of the mark in their views of 
nature. They had no conception of the size, or shape of 
the earth, nor of its daily rotation on its axis, nor of its annual 
revolution around the sun, and the cause of winter and 
summer. The theories they advanced were only the pro- 
ducts of random guesswork. The most of the guesses even 
by the medieval philosophers would now be thrown aside 
as utterly unbelievable because they would not harmonize 
with the knowledge which has been acquired since the 
Middle Ages. 

Once there were unlimited facilities for guessing as to how 
the solar system might have come into existence. Now the 
origin of the Sun and Planets is adequately explained when 
we have unfolded all that is implied in the processes which 
are still going on in the solar system. Formerly appeals 



14 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

were made to all manner of violent agencies to account for 
the changes which the earth's surface has undergone since 
our planet began its independent career; now it is seen that 
the same slow working of rain and tide, wind and waves and 
frost, which has taken place during a long period of time, 
the contracting of the earth's crust, and the earthquake up- 
heavals all around the globe, which are visible today, will 
account for all the physical changes of the earth's crust. It 
is not long since it was supposed that a species of animals 
or plants could be swept away only by some unusual catas- 
trophe, while for the origin of a new species a special act of 
creation was necessary, and as to the nature of such extra- 
ordinary events there was endless room for guesswork, but 
the discovery of natural selection was the discovery of a pro- 
cess, going on perpetually under our own eyes, which must 
inevitably of itself extinguish some species, and bring new 
ones into being. 

In these and countless other ways we have learned that 
all the rich variety of nature is pervaded by unity of action, 
such as we might expect to find if nature is the manifestation 
of an infinite God. The very fact that man has ascended 
gradually from an animal level, implies that any very early 
traces of him which we may find, will lead to almost endless 
controversy. If we find remains of the being who is slowly 
assuming human shape, it would be quite natural that many 
would hesitate whether to describe the transitional form, 
as animal or human. If we find specimens of man's most 
primitive efforts to give an edge to a flint, the marks will 
differ from the chippings to which flints are subjected in the 
river beds, or on the shore of the ocean. It is not surprising, 
therefore, that the claims for the most primitive traces of man 
are much disputed. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 15 

The original records of the world's earliest history are 
furnished by astronomy and geology. These records are 
written in the construction of the solar system, and in the 
rock strata, and fossils of the earth. They are contemporary 
documents, and their testimony has unquestionable authority. 
The evidence that we now possess of the long period of time 
that has elapsed since man first made his appearance on earth 
is presented to us by the many fine collections of prehistoric 
remains of man and his implements found imbedded in the 
strata of rock, and in caves in nearly all parts of the world, 
underneath the glacial drift. These petrified remains date 
back to the remote past, according to some geologists, 200,- 
000 years. In England, France, and Scandinavia, the 
science has for decades had able leaders, and ample litera- 
ture. Italy, Belgium and Switzerland, are hardly behind 
these countries, and Spain, and Austria, have reported some 
remarkable discoveries in recent years. Both North and 
South America have their workers and literature, and the 
research has now been carried to some extent all over the 
civilized world. The advance of the science has become too 
large for summary in this book. 

From the enormous accumulation of material which half 
a century of research has given us, we are now able to 
sketch the general outline, and fill in much detail, of the 
prehistoric life of humanity. Even if we had found no hu- 
man remains whatever, we should have ample proof of the 
gradual rise of man from a lowly level to the dawn of 
civilization. From roughly worked stones, in which we 
barely recognize the artificial chipping that fitted them for 
primitive man's uses, we pass through slow and steady stages 
of improvement in workmanship, until we reach a period of 
f,nely polished stone axes and delicately chipped arrows and 



16 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

lance heads. After these we find man experimenting in 
copper, the first available metal that would meet his eye, 
and passing quickly to the use of bronze, the harder alloy 
which an intelligent being would soon devise. Lastly, in 
the full dawn of history, we meet weapons and implements 
of iron. But we are by no means restricted to these imper- 
ishable memorials of man's handiwork, which so fully illus- 
trate the gradual rise of human intelligence. 

We have now a very fair collection of actual human re- 
mains of the prehistoric age, and they are in entire accord 
with the conclusion we draw from the stone implements. Of 
the men of the early Stone Age we have now about ten im- 
portant skulls or jaws, with many other bones. We shall 
see that these exhibit a human type of the very lowest level 
known to us ; though we shall have to consider certain bones 
found in Java, which recall an even lower and much earlier 
period. The few remains we have of the men of the later 
Old Stone Age show just such an increase in cranial de- 
velopment as our study of their handiwork would suggest, 
and this improvement is maintained when we rise to the New 
Stone Age. For the later period the remains are, of course, 
abundant. When we take a glance at the photographs that 
have been taken of these skulls, we perceive at once the as- 
cending character of the story of mankind. The succession 
of stone and metal ages is now beyond cavil ; though there 
are often stages of mental development at the same time, in 
the sense that one race may remain at the earlier level while 
another pushes forward to a higher stage. Many of the 
savage tribes in the beginning of the nineteenth century were 
still remaining in that condition they occupied when in the 
very lowest levels of primitive culture. The study of sav- 
ages is, in fact, a most instructive parallel to the study of 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 17 

prehistoric races. They are fragments of the early waves of 
distribution of the human family, retaining in their isolation 
the characters of human life as it was for all, in a remote 
antiquity. Some of them have still the low type of skull 
and the crude implements and weapons of the prehistoric 
man. 

In geology generally, and in prehistoric science especially, 
all chronological schemes must be regarded with great re- 
serve. Geologists differ in their judgment in regard to the 
age of the world. Some take about 55 million years as a 
fair average estimate of the time it took to form the stratified 
rocks of the earth's crust, while many eminent geologists 
would place the time at least 1 00 million years. So in regard 
to primitive man. Any estimate which falls short of 1 00,- 
000 years since man appeared on the earth may be ignored, 
but it is difficult to go far beyond this. One of the most 
careful estimates (that of Mortillet) assigns 250,000 years 
for the whole story since the advent of man, but many emi- 
nent authors would double this. Therefore, we will neces- 
sarily conclude that we have by no means as yet discovered 
material required to settle the question of chronology, and 
will have to wait for farther discoveries, while we pause at 
the various phases of evolution, and ask — whence these 
things were. It is enough to say, with Sir John Evans, one 
of the most cautious authorities: "The mind is almost lost in 
amazement at the vista of antiquity displayed. If we can 
succeed in restoring the outline of some of the strange races 
of men who roamed our planet with strange animal com- 
panions, in the dark night of prehistory, we may leave the 
closer determination to a more developed science." 



18 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

It has only been within the last century that we knew 
anything about the world's early history, except what we 
got from the Bible, and from some legends preserved by 
Greek authors. These were exclusively the only sources of 
the little knowledge to be obtained of the early history of 
the human race, but now we have a wealth of new informa- 
tion that has come to light through the discoveries of astron- 
omy, geology, and archaeology, and by the study of these 
sciences a new meaning has been given to many statements 
in the Bible, and many gaps in its narrative been supplied. 
The long successive periods of the world's ancient history 
have been wonderfully enlarged by modern discoveries, in 
regard to the period that preceded the appearance of man 
on the earth. The original records of the earth's early his- 
tory are furnished by geology in the different strata of rock 
and fossils of the earth's crust, and the testimony they bear 
is unquestionable. If we turn our attention to the study of 
geology or archaeology, we would undoubtedly be convinced 
of the long period of time required to form the many sedi- 
mentary rock strata that cover the foundation crust of the 
earth, we would not question the truth of statements made by 
geologists, that millions of years were necessary to produce 
such prodigious accumulation of material, and in some of 
these later formations of sedimentary rocks (say about 200,- 
000 years ago), are found the fossil remains of many ex- 
tinct animals and man. 

As I have stated above, the Bible was supposed to contain 
a true record of creation as found in the first chapters of 
Genesis, and it has been held by Old Testament scholars 
until the last century that this account was handed down from 
Heaven to Moses, and its authority was undisputed. But 
we know now that this record was not committed to writing 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 19 

until about 500 B. C, but the oral tradition on which it was 
based went back to a high antiquity. This tradition cannot 
have originated at the time of creation, since man did not 
yet exist on the earth. 

It has been recognized in modern times by scholars that 
this story has been borrowed by the Hebrews from the 
Babylonians, and they derived it from their Sumerian prede- 
cessors. These people were in possession of the land for 
thousands of years before the Semitic peoples (the race 
from which the Hebrews descended) arrived in the land 
to conquer and subdue its inhabitants. From the excava- 
tions among the ruins of these ancient cities, have been 
found large libraries written on tablets of clay, and among 
these are found tablets containing a story of creation, very 
similar to that found in the first chapters of Genesis. These 
tablets were written in the Sumerian language, an unknown 
language, and which has been deciphered only in recent 
years and is very different from the Babylonian, or Semitic. 
Most all the religious ideas of the Babylonians were derived 
from the Sumerians, and these tablets that have been ex- 
humed from those old mounds originated as far back per- 
haps as 10,000 years. This story then, was in existence 
several thousand years before Moses was born. The idea 
of a creation out of a primitive watery chaos would naturally 
arise among the Babylonians whose land was inundated 
every spring by the Euphrates and Tigris. Other statements 
in the early chapters of Genesis, such as the Garden of Eden, 
the Tower of Babel, are also clearly of Babylonian origin. 
The only possible theory is that the Hebrew account has 
been borrowed in some way from the Babylonians. 



20 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

If this story of creation is of Babylonian origin, there is 
no reason why we should expect it to correspond with the ac- 
count given by modern astronomy and geology. The ancient 
Babylonians knew nothing of our modern science, and there 
is no evidence that they had a divine illumination superior 
to other peoples of antiquity. The earliest written records in 
Babylonia and Egypt date from about 4000 B.C., but 
back of these, archaeology discovers a long series of remains 
that testify that our race was already ancient when writing 
was first invented, and that the people that lived along the 
Euphrates had arrived at a higher state of civilization before 
the Semitic people entered the land, than ever existed there 
since. 

In the book of Genesis the narrative there regards man's 
appearance on the earth as due to a special act of creation 
on the part of God. He made man out of the dust of the 
earth at the beginning of creation, and woman was formed 
out of one of his ribs. Science regards man as the last link 
in the chain of evolution. He was developed out of a lower 
type of animal that resembled the apes, and this species of 
animal can be traced back to the beginning of life on the 
earth, and from this man has developed through evolution 
during the unknown ages of the past. In 1892 Dubois re- 
ported the discovery of a skull in the Island of Java that in 
its shape and capacity was intermediate between the apes 
and man, and others have discovered skulls that show in- 
termediate stages of development between this Java skull 
and the skulls of the lowest existing races of men. The 
figures given in the book of Genesis place the origin of man 
about 4000 B.C. This is contrary to the evidence both of 
archaeology and geology. Archaeology shows that in 4000 
B.C. civilization was already in full bloom in Babylon and 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 21 

Egypt, and geology shows that the origin of man must be 
placed thousands of years earlier. It is quite well agreed 
among geologists that a being far enough evolved to be called 
man, existed on the earth at the beginning of the Glacial 
period, and the prevailing opinion is that that date cannot 
have been much less than 500,000 years. A long period of 
time must have been necessary for the accumulation of the 
enormous deposits of the Glacial age, for the change of cli- 
mate from the Glacial to the present, for the change of an- 
imals from the extinct species that were contemporary 
with primitive man to the present, for the development of 
the different races of mankind, for the growth of the differ- 
ent languages, and for the progress of civilization to the high 
point that was already attained in Egypt and Babylon as 
early as 4000 B.C. In contrast to this account of science 
the book of Genesis represents man as possessing at the out- 
set the civilization of the late Neolithic period, or the stone 
age. 

According to Genesis 2:5-15 and 3:17-23, man was an 
agriculturist from the beginning, but science shows that he 
did not take up agriculture until long after the Neolithic 
age. In Genesis 4:2, Abel is a keeper of sheep, but do- 
mestic animals were not bred at that time ; Cain built cities. 
4:17, but cities did not exist before the bronze age. In 
reality, the ages of bronze and iron were thousands of years 
later and they did not come into use until about 1 200 B.C. 
By eating the forbidden fruit Adam attained at once know- 
ledge of good and evil, Gen. 3 :5-7. In reality this knowledge 
has been slowly acquired through the experience of many 
centuries. According to Gen. 3 :3-19, death was consequence 
of Adam's disobedience, but death has always been in the 
world and is involved in the very constitution of our bodies. 



22 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

Man's primitive home in the Garden of Eden, with its won- 
derful trees that conferred life and death and knowledge by 
the eating of their fruit, and its animals that possessed the 
power of speech; evidently like many of the other stories, 
belongs to the realm of mythology rather than that of history. 

"What bearing does evolution have on man any way?" 
It affirms the origin and descent of man in both body and 
soul from animal forms. It was this application of the theory 
that at first gave such a shock to religious feelings. But we 
need not fear or hesitate at this application of the doctrine, 
for it introduces no new principle or difficulty. Whether 
man was thus derived by evolutionary descent is a scientific 
question of fact to be decided by scientific methods of inves- 
tigation. It does not touch the ultimate origin and nature of 
man as a divine creation and a child of God. The religious 
account of the creation of man is that God formed man out 
of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of life; and man became a living soul. This state- 
ment is strongly suggestive of an evolutionary process and 
it stands literally true in the light of our modern science. 
That the human body is formed of the dust of the ground 
is evidenced by the fact that it can be resolved into dust and 
may be scattered by the wind or the running stream. Evolu- 
tion does not affirm that man was created instantly, but 
through long process. It puts many steps between the dust 
of the ground and the developed human body, but these 
steps in no wise exclude, but at every point include God. 
Evolution does not in the least degree impair the spirituality 
and personality and responsibility, conscience and character, 
the supreme worth and immortality of man. It simply de- 
scribes the process by which God created him as his human 
child and no more debases the worth of the child than evolu- 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 23 

tionary generation and growth impair the worth of our chil- 
dren. And as consciousness and personality, freedom and 
responsibility, conscience and character come out at the top 
of evolution in man, these powers and qualities must have 
been in the Cause in the beginning, and at this point evolu- 
tion confirms our belief in a God. 

But has not evolution profoundly changed the whole as- 
pect of the world so that it has lost much of its former re- 
ligious significance? Have not the celestial light, the glory 
and the freshness of a dream been swept from it by our 
evolutionary science, as the rosy dawn of the morning is dis- 
sipated by the piercing and pitiless light of the rising sun? 
No doubt this has been in some degree the first effect of 
evolution. It takes time for us to adjust ourselves to new 
views, especially on such profound and vital matters as 
religion. But after the adjustment has been made the last 
state is better than the first. 

There was a time when all things, the origin of which was 
beyond the bounds of human thought or experience, were 
supposed to have originated suddenly and without natural 
process — to have been made at once out of hand. There 
was a time when mountains were supposed to have been 
made at once, with all their diversified forms, of prominent 
cliffs and thundering waterfalls, or gentle slopes and smiling 
valleys, just as we now find them. But now we know that 
they have become so only by a very gradual process, and 
are still changing under our very own eyes. We know now 
the date of mountain births; we trace their growth, ma- 
turity, decay and death, and find, even as it were, the fossil 
remains of extinct mountains in the crumpled strata of for- 
mer places. There was a time when continents, seas, gulfs, 



24 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

bays and rivers were supposed to have originated at once, 
substantially as we now see them. Now we know that they 
have been changing throughout all geological time, and are 
still changing, slowly, but gradually from less perfect to 
more perfect condition. We are now able, though still im- 
perfectly, to trace some of the stages of this evolution. There 
was a time when rocks and soils were supposed to have been 
always rocks and soils ; when soils were regarded as an orig- 
inal clothing made on purpose to hide the rocky nakedness of 
the new born earth ; God clothed the earth so, and that was 
the end. Now we know that rocks rot down to soils; 
soils are carried down and deposited as sediments ; and sedi- 
ments reconsolidated as rocks — the same materials being 
worked over and over again, passing through all these stages 
many times in the history of the earth. In a word, there was 
a time when it was thought that the earth with substantially 
its present form, configuration and climate, was made at once 
out of hand, as a fit habitation for man and animals. Now we 
know that it has been changing, preparing, becoming what it 
is by a slow process ; through a lapse of time so vast that the 
mind sinks exhausted in the attempt to grasp it. It has be- 
come, what it is now by a process of evolution. 

The proof of all this we owe to geology — a science born 
of the present century. This science establishes the law of 
universal continuity of events, through infinite time, as as- 
tronomy does that of universal inter-relation of objects 
through infinite space. How great the change these two 
sciences have made in the realm of human thought. 

Until the birth of modern astronomy, the intellectual 
horizon of the human mind was bounded substantially by the 
dimensions of our earth; sun, moon and stars being but in- 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 25 

considerable bodies circulating at a little distance above the 
earth, and for our special benefit. With the first glance 
through a telescope, the phases of Venus and the satellites 
of Jupiter revealed clearly to the mind the existence of other 
worlds beside and like our own. In that moment the idea of 
infinite space, full of worlds like our own, was for the first 
time completely realized, and became thenceforward the 
heritage of man. So also until the birth of geology, about 
the beginning of the last century, the intellectual horizon of 
the human mind was bounded by six thousand years. The 
discovery about that time of vertebrate remains, all wholly 
different from those now inhabiting the earth, revealed the 
existence of other time faunas besides our own, and the idea 
of infinite time, of which the life of humanity is but an epoch, 
was born in the mind of man, and again the intellectual 
horizon of man was infinitely extended. These two are the 
grandest ideas and their introduction the grandest epochs, 
in the intellectual history of man. We have long ago ac- 
cepted these scientific discoveries from the evidence we have 
as the right interpretation of nature and have readjusted our 
thinking to meet the requirements of the age in which we live. 



26 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 



Chapter II 
History of the Bible 

THE INTENSE love of truth, has never been so 
strong, nor has there ever been anything to compare 
with the wide and eager study of our time. To 
know the universe in its true character, all of man's wonder- 
ful discoveries of the world in which we live, is the com- 
manding feature of the mental life of our time. Nature hav- 
ing so long and patiently besieged us, has at last thrown 
down her barriers and invited us to enter. We have per- 
fected the telescope, and so broken through the barrier of 
the skies, until the infinite has come out of its hiding place 
and become familiar to our mind. Above us, around us, 
beneath our feet, is a world of objects, all of them interest- 
ing, all of them commanding us with an authority that may 
not be gainsaid, to study them and so enlarge our minds. 
New conceptions of nature at large, of her laws and methods 
of action, have been the inevitable result. The science of 
mind and of history have been subject to scarcely less marked 
and extensive changes. Even the current views on ethical 
questions have been greatly modified. 

This progress of modern science in all these forms, could 
not fail to have its effect on the current views as to the char- 
acter of the biblical books. Every object that makes a part 
of our universe calls us to come forth with our choicest ideas, 
that we may be able to interpret the truth, and recognize to 
the full the intellectual glory and splendor of our epoch 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 27 

Now the Bible is one object among others that has a sov- 
ereign right to command our attention, a supreme power to 
tax and control our interest. Then, if we would truly know 
our responsibilities we should know its story. As students 
of literature, we should acquaint ourselves with its intrinsic 
qualities. As men of serious minds we should think of it 
as the book of devotion to high aims and ennobling ends, 
from which the choicest spirits of the world have drawn 
strength and inspiration. That splendid ideal of knowledge, 
that impassioned desire to know, which is the mental glory of 
our time, lays upon us the obligation to acquaint ourselves 
with the Bible and its history. 

Then the question arises, when was the Bible written, 
what were the motives of the writers, and why were their 
writings preserved, and for what purpose? The personal 
motives of the writers of the Gospels are so clearly revealed 
in Luke's introduction to his own Gospel, it is well to re- 
view his statements. He says, "Forasmuch as many have 
taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those 
things which are most assuredly believed among us, even as 
they delivered them unto us which from the beginning were 
eye witnesses, and ministers of the word, it seemed good to 
me also having had perfect understanding of all things from 
the very first, to write unto thee in order." What is the im- 
plication here of these witnesses? Manifestly that it was the 
custom in those days to write what they knew about Jesus, 
either by personal observation or by hearsay, and that such 
writings were purely human and unguided by any special 
divine oversight, save only as any good man may be guided 
who gives himself to a pure and noble undertaking. How 
absurd, then, in the face of Luke's explanation of his own 
motives and purposes in writing his narrative is the claim of 



28 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

its absolute divine guidance. How absurd the statement 
made by many that no part of the Bible was written with- 
out miraculous influence, and that all parts were equally in- 
spired, in regard to the whole volume, the great end was 
infallibly attained, namely, the committment to writing of 
precisely such matters as God designed for the religious in- 
struction of mankind. While this doctrine has held the 
scepter of authority for many ages, it is nevertheless true, 
that it is not the primitive Christian doctrine of inspiration, 
but is comparatively modern. 

Although we usually regard the Bible as one book, it is in 
reality a collection of books, or writings, of a widely diverse 
origin, with very different characteristics and degrees of 
value. The separate writings considered by themselves, and 
apart from the relations which they sustain to each other 
within the Bible as we have it today, do not constitute the 
Bible at all. The mere existence of a larger or smaller num- 
ber of compositions, written by inspired men, does not of 
itself, explain the existence of the Bible. For it is not one 
writing but written by many, under various conditions, for 
two thousand years. As a collection it can claim no in- 
fallibility, or authority which is not dependent upon the 
authority by which the collection came to be made. By 
what authority then was this collection of sacred scripture 
made from the large number of sacred writings that were in 
existence at that time, and who shall determine the fitness 
of the writings that shall enter into this collection or canon of 
sacred scripture? The very term implies that some selec- 
tion has been made upon ground of fitness, and that certain 
writings are fit, and others are not fit. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 29 

In order then to have an infallible Bible this authority 
must be infallible. As history proves the church to be the 
sole authority in making these selections there is no escape 
from the argument which connects the inspiration of the 
church, with the inspiration of the Bible. If the church was 
not inspired, in the making, and limiting of the collection of 
sacred writings, then we have no guarantee for the inspira- 
tion of the collection. Indeed, the fallacy of the position, 
assumed by that form of doctrine, held by the theologians in 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is most potent and 
distressing. After denying the infallibility of the inspiration 
of the church, they regarded the absolute infallibility and 
equal inspiration of all parts of the Bible, as a necessary as- 
sumption of faith. They held that the belief and life of the 
Christian are dependent on a certain set of writings, in such 
a way that if a single error of any kind whatever, were ad- 
mitted to exist in these writings, their belief would totter 
and fall. Nor could this particular collection of writings 
be regarded as related in any intelligible manner to other 
writings of prophetic and apostolic men. For the so-called 
canonical books, and they alone were to be considered 
without the exception of a single verse or word, as put into 
the minds of the writers ready made by the Holy Spirit. 
All the canonical books they claimed came direct from 
God, who moved and impelled the sacred writers to do their 
work. Even the subject matter was suggested by the Holy 
Ghost, as this was necessary to inspiration of every portion 
of the Bible. But especially was every word supplied and 
dictated to the writers including all errors and inelegancies 
of style. This belief remained for a long time, before it 
was overthrown, although marks of its influence still abound 
everywhere among Christian people, but the doctrine is not 



30 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

now defended by any Bible scholars whose judgment is en- 
titled to respect. 

Now what about the other books that were written by 
religious men along side of the books that were selected, and 
held by many to be just as sacred. For there were a great 
many writers of sacred literature simultaneous to the writings 
of both the New and Old Testament. It appears that two 
kinds of human speech have had a providential preparation 
to fit them for becoming the best suited to express the ideas 
and spirit of revelation. One of these is the Greek, the 
other is the Semitic, or Hebrew language. Each of these 
had its own peculiar definite peculiarities, the one the fit 
medium of the old Testament revelation, the other the fit 
vehicle for conveying the Christian revelation. The work of 
the Divine Spirit in providentially selecting and shaping 
these languages to the self-revelation of God, as the Re- 
deemer of men in Christ, is manifest in history to every de- 
vout student. The ideas themselves that have been revealed 
to some of the writers are peculiar to biblical religion, and 
they have been clothed in language which they have largely 
moulded for themselves. 

The individual writers of this sacred literature not infre- 
quently show in their language and literary style, the influ- 
ence of the new ideas which they have received by revela- 
tion, and of the new impulses of the Spirit which are moving 
in their souls. There are, however, some entire books and 
many shorter passages of the biblical writings, for which no 
proof of such influence of inspiration upon the language can 
be claimed. This is especially true of the historical writ- 
ings of the Old Testament. Most of the sacred ideas so far 
as their language and style are concerned, show this only in 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 31 

an indirect way ; that is to say, they share in the general in- 
heritance of a language and style prepared by divine spiritual 
influences which all the pious of the nation possess. 

But among the various writings of a widely diverse origin, 
with very different characteristics and degrees of value, who 
was able originally to detect the qualities of infallible in- 
spiration in the particular number of religious writings which 
were selected and now constitute the Bible? The only 
possible answer to this question is, this work was accom- 
plished by the Jewish church under the old dispensation, and 
the Christian church under the new, through the providential 
guidance, and direction of the Divine Spirit. But if all the 
writings within the Bible, and no others, are regarded as 
infallibly inspired, what escape is there from the conclu- 
sion that the authority which constituted the Bible is itself 
infallibly inspired? Now that is to say that the church is 
infallibly inspired. But who believes that? Nobody except 
the Catholics. No one therefore, can intelligently believe 
in the infallible inspiration of the church. In fact, it is the 
inspiration of the Bible. The collection of sacred writings 
which we call the Bible came into existence, as a whole com- 
posed of many parts in no other way than through the action 
of the living church of God under the guidance of the Holy 
Spirit. 

Then the question, "How we came to have the Bible as it 
is today," is undoubtedly a question of history. It is im- 
possible to answer it in any other way than by an examina- 
tion of history. But even in this its answer is not easy. It is 
certain, however, that neither the Jewish nor the Christian 
church ever intended to set apart a definite collection of 
writings, as totally unlike all others, with respect to their re- 



32 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

lation to the divine work of revelation or inspiration. Nor 
did they intend to teach by canonizing certain books that 
these books were all of like inspiration, authority or value. In 
other words, whatever conception of a canon may have been 
reached by the early church, in the midst of whose life and 
experience the accepted canon received its shaping, this 
conception was very different from that prevalent among 
uninformed Christians in the present day. The original 
idea the early church fathers had in the canon of the New 
Testament, was to select such writings as would furnish to 
the body of believers a collection of writings, presumably 
authentic, and inspired, which in time past have been judged 
to be of authority in teaching Christian doctrine, and useful 
in building up the Christian life. Hence we have the words 
canonical scriptures to designate them from other writings, 
and similar terms such as the Rule of the Church, the Rule 
of Truth, the Rule of Faith, which frequently occur in the 
works of the Church fathers, and especially in their con- 
troversies with heretics. The history of the process of the 
formation of the canon, is a long one, and many points in it 
are still obscure, nor will the obscure points ever, in all prob- 
ability, be cleared up. 

A very brief account of some of the principal features of 
this history is all that can now be attempted. It is especially 
true of the Old Testament, that no amount of historical 
study will ever enable the world of scholars to tell in detail 
how its canon came to be formed. In the light of all our 
experience of the methods of the divine procedure, we are 
convinced that God does everything in an historical way. 
The conditions of history are His opportunities and are 
therefore His only divine mode of action in the world. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 33 

The biblical revelation has pre-eminently this character of 
historical and continuous development. Every form of di- 
vine revelation is in need of a positive character, and it fixes 
itself among men in some definite form of manifestation, and 
so becomes an institution of which the history of the race 
takes note. In this way alone it is able to influence the shap- 
ing of the race. So in this way we have scattered all along 
through the Old Testament, some indications which we put 
together as an aid to help us to arrive at some understanding 
of the process by which the work of collecting its writings 
went on. 

The beginning of the formation of a canon of sacred He- 
brew scriptures seems to have been with the record of the 
covenant between Jehovah mentioned in Deut. 31 :24, in 
these words, "And it came to pass, when Moses had made 
an end of writing the words of this law in a book until they 
were finished that Moses commanded the Levites which bare 
the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, 'Take this book 
of the law and put it in the side of the ark, as a witness 
against thee.' " This seems to be the first record of any of 
the sacred writings and it only embraced the law of Moses, 
and that unfinished. This was just previous to his death, 
and written by Joshua in the renewal of the covenant. The 
next writing we have recorded was written by Samuel, five 
hundred years later, containing the fundamental law of the 
kingdom, Sam. 10:25, "Then Samuel told the people the 
manner of the kingdom, and wrote it in a book, and laid 
it up before the Lord." 

But we do not reach any full recognition of any writing as 
9 canonical scripture, until the reign of Josiah, 621 B.C., 
and about a thousand years after the death of Moses. Ac- 



34 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

cording to the narrative found in 2 Kings 22, it seems that 
the book of the law had been lost for a generation or two 
and almost forgotten, and was found in repairing the 
Temple. Josiah, as it appears, did not know of a written 
law, nor was he aware of the nature of its contents. The re- 
forms which followed in his reign clearly imply his new ac- 
quaintance with certain special provisions found therein. 
Out of this ancient law book of Moses and other old time 
enactments a pious Jew in the reign of Josiah composed 
the book of Deuteronomy in substantially its present form. 
He made Moses address ancient Israel with this law of Je- 
hovah, and in using rhetorical style he did no violence to the 
substantial truth, while he succeeded in giving the law as a 
living force, as a voice of the Lord, to the people of his 
own day. Deuteronomy was not in its present form, 
throughout, the work of Moses. Its author plainly dis- 
tinguishes himself from Moses; and both ancient and more 
recent developments of legislation can be detected in it. But 
the great body of its laws correspond to those of that sec- 
tion of the Torah which is found in Exodus. These are 
the most ancient of the Mosaic law. 

Undoubtedly the first six books of the Bible are a com- 
posite literary structure, the source and material of which 
came from different authors at different times. They could 
not therefore have been all the work of Moses. It is a matter 
of common agreement among scholars that the work of many 
authors can easily be detected, and, indeed, this fact is tol- 
erably patent to the intelligent and careful reader. The 
hand of some later workman is apparent throughout the 
Pentateuch, and other smaller documents and oral traditions, 
ancient songs, scraps of history, groups of laws, separate 
legal enactments have been much worked over by many 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 35 

scribes before the Hebrew manuscripts of the first books 
reached the form in which they served as the basis for our 
present text. 

Genesis also, like the rest of the five books, notwithstand- 
ing that in it a distinct literary plan is carried out, is not the 
uniform work of a single author, but is a combination of 
several works which, at one time, circulated independently. 
Such repetitions, disarrangements, contradictions, and chron- 
ological difficulties, are not explainable on any other as- 
sumption. (Dilman). All the sacred literature and the 
early history of the nation, including the law, had been kept 
in one book, until the time of Ezra. But during his time, 
and for some time after, a great deal of new material gath- 
ered from other writings, was added, and divided into five 
books, and put into final shape, and each book named as we 
have it now. 

The writings of the Old Testament themselves bear wit- 
ness to the fact, that other Hebrew writings had been high- 
ly esteemed, and had therefore been preserved before the 
canonization of any of the Old Testament books took place. 
Why the later Jews so esteemed these earlier writings, the 
leply must be, that they regarded them as theocratic litera- 
ture. It is on this ground too, that the writings of the Old 
Testament as a whole were regarded as sacred. They were 
the records of the messages of the Lord to, and the deal- 
ings of the Lord with the nation of Israel, under the covenant 
which he made with their ancestors. But the claim to a 
place in this theocratic literature differed very greatly for the 
different writings. It was for a long time doubtful whether 
certain of the later writings should have a place in the Bible 
at all. According to Ezra the law of Moses had first been 



3 6 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

brought to Jerusalem (after the exile) in the year 458 B.C. 
from Babylon, where they had been carried into exile, and 
kept for seventy years. Thus, the writings of the book of 
Moses (so-called) became the sacred and authoritative 
source of the national law. It was this collecting together 
of other books, with these which had been so many cen- 
turies in reaching the shape they then had, after the return 
from the exile, that formed the nucleus for the entire canon 
of the Old Testament scriptures. Before the exile there 
existed an indefinite collection of prophetic writings that had 
the same value as the Mosaic, that would have been attached 
to the oral utterances of any one regarded as a true prophet, 
that were not placed in the canon at this time. It was only 
after Ezra's time that a more precise estimate of these pro- 
phetic writings arose. Then the Jews became very active in 
canonizing these ancient writings, and this activity continued 
for several centuries, until the country had become a Grecian 
province, and for some time after. 

But the decay of the Hebrew language and its tendency 
to fall into the position of an unknown, or dead language, 
and the consequent cessation of the production of prophetic 
literature in that language undoubedly closed the process. 
Therefore, the productive activity of the earlier theocratic 
spirit was forever gone, and the days of the great inspired 
civil and religious leaders and authors of the nation were 
over. The last work done in completing the canon of sacred 
Hebrew writings, consisted in selecting from a miscellan- 
eous group of writings, poetic, prophetic, and historical, 
certain individual compositions which are now comprised in 
the Old Testament. These compositions were justly con- 
sidered inferior to the earlier works, yet they were thought 
worthy of preservation in Israel's sacred literature. They 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 37 

were called the writings, and the very name shows how in- 
definite was the nature of their contents. In it were included 
Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther and Ruth, which, on 
account of their late origin and inferior character, could not 
be placed with the earlier historical books, among the so- 
called former prophets. There was a long dispute over the 
books of Esther, the song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes, 
whether they should be admitted or not. The Jewish rabbis 
felt objections to these writings similar to those felt by many 
in the present day. This dispute was not wholly settled 
even at the beginning of the third century after Christ. It is 
very difficult to tell why certain writings now classed among 
the Apocryphal books of the Old Testament were not also 
admitted. Indeed, it is probable that no one rule governed 
the selection made among these later writings. There were 
fourteen of these apocryphal books or books of doubtful au- 
thority, which were for the most part, excluded from the 
canon by the Jews of Palestine, but not by the 70 wise Jews 
that translated the Old Testament into Greek, called the 
Septuagint. They were excluded from the Hetrew canon 
not because they were not deemed equally inspired with 
such later writings, as were admitted, but because no copies 
of them existed in the sacred or Hebrew language. These 
apocryphal books were all retained in the Greek texts until 
the council of Trent in 1545, when three of them were re- 
jected, but all the others are still retained in the Latin ver- 
sion but are generally omitted now in the English version. 
We shall never probably be able to tell who wrote most of 
the Hebrew Bible, or at what date most of its books came 
into existence, but the relations in which they stand as a 
whole to the writings of the New Testament, as well as our 
estimate of their character and value, are not greatly altered 
or essentially changed on that account. 



38 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

The method of investigation, for determining the nature 
of that historical process which resulted in forming the col- 
lection of the New Testament writings, was quite different 
from that of the Old. In the case of the Old Testament, 
the evidence is almost entirely derived from internal criticism. 
But in the case of the New, although there is little direct evi- 
dence, which reaches back into the first century, we are able 
to trace the path, by which the church reached, in the fol- 
lowing centuries, a substantial unanimity in its decision. 
Providence seems to have gradually guided the great body 
of believers, in the large central churches in their judgment, 
in settling the question of a fixed New Testament canon; 
and afterward what the bishops thought and said, was of 
great value, and especially the opinions of Jerome, and 
Augustine in helping to settle the agitated questions. 

Three tolerably well marked steps in the historical process 
of forming the New Testament canon need to be distin- 
guished. The first of these periods came to a close soon 
after the middle of the second century. This period was oc- 
cupied in grasping the idea that Christian believers had a 
collection of sacred writings from the apostolic sources which 
century. During this period the church catholic was taking 
should be placed in some way, upon the same level with the 
scriptures of the Old Testament, for purposes of public re- 
ligious instruction. By the close of the period, this idea was 
applied by common consent of the churches, to all but seven 
of the New Testament books. 

The question in debate during this time was the genuine- 
ness of the separate writings. The second period of the 
formation of the New Testament canon extends from toward 
the close of the second, until toward the close of the fourth 
century. During this period the church catholic was taking 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 3 9 

its position over against the various sects and heresies, with 
which it had to contend. This made it very essential, that 
the limits of its sacred scriptures should be more definitely 
fixed than they had hitherto been. 

The question of the canon became practically determined 
by receiving into it all the books of the present New Testa- 
ment. Yet it was understood, that the seven doubtful books, 
were not received into the canon as being of the same rank 
with the others, and that they were not to be used as authori- 
tative sources of apostolic doctrine. To this class of books, 
holding the second rank, belong Second Peter, Second and 
Third John, James, and Jude. And with less unanimity of 
testimony, the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse. During the 
third period from the close of the fourth century onward, 
no change in the limits of the New Testament canon appears 
but the distinction of its books into two classes becomes, in a 
large degree, practically lost. 

In the very earliest of the three periods mentioned, we do 
not find any recognition of divine authority in the New Tes- 
tament writings. The very idea of a New Testament canon 
was a long time in process of formation. At first the con- 
sciousness of a vital connection with the instruction, and 
practice of the Apostles, satisfied the churches, which had 
listened to their preaching, or that of their helpers, or which 
had received epistles from them. These epistles were 
doubtless read publicly to the Christian congregations to 
whom they were addressed, but such reading was probably 
not at all regular. There was no thought of putting them on 
a level with the sacred Hebrew scripture, which the Chris- 
tian congregations seem to have transferred from the Jewish 
Synagogues to be read in their own public assemblies. % 



40 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

Clement of Rome, and Ignatius, speaking of these letters 
from the apostles, shows that they were originally received 
by the churches, simply as affectionate addresses from those 
whom the Lord himself had deemed most worthy of his 
work. Since these letters were in some instances, designed 
for more than one church and were in all cases adapted for 
the building up of the common Christian faith, and since 
they were composed by teachers so revered and trusted, 
copies of them were multiplied, and spread among the early 
Christian communities. In the meantime, certain other writ- 
ings, that came either directly or indirectly from the same 
apostolic sources were slowly making their way among them 
according to the customary methods of the time. Before the 
middle of the second century, we find scattered traces of the 
existence of the separate New Testament writings, and of 
the esteem in which they were held, as fit for public reading 
in the churches. But this is far from proving the existence 
of anything like a New Testament canon. For the writings 
that were regarded as inspired, and profitable for public 
reading, did not all by any means attain a place in the canon. 
For example, the Shepherd of Hermas, was used somewhat 
widely for public reading in the churches. The epistle of 
Clement, and also the epistle of Soter were read by the Cor- 
inthians on the Lord's Day, and so also was the Apocalypse 
of Peter. 

It seems a little strange to us at the present day, that the 
revelation of Peter should be rejected, while the Revelation 
of John was accepted. But we cannot enter into the dis- 
cussion, nor the evidence for the acceptance of some of the 
writings, and the rejection of others, in this brief paper. Was 
not his authority as good as John's? Did Peter make a mis- 
take in writing it, or did the early church make a mistake in 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 41 

rejecting it. During all this period the principal work of 
Christian scholars consisted in showing that these New Tes- 
tament writings were in existence as separate writings, and 
that they were written by the persons to whose names they 
are assigned, or else that they have other marks of being 
authentic apostolic instruction regarding the nature of true 
Christianity, and the practice of the true Christian life. At 
the close of the second century the present four Gospels were 
received as the genuine, and all other claimants to a similar 
position had ceased to be regarded as rivals of these four. 
By common consent of the churches their public reading was 
widely and firmly established, and many copies of them 
were distributed throughout the entire Christian world. They 
were continually quoted and appealed to as authoritative 
scripture for the instruction of believers regarding the true 
history of our Lord's teachings and life. The judgment of 
the churches was also harmonious with respect to the Acts, 
thirteen epistles of Paul, one epistle of Peter, and one of 
John, and the book of Revelation. 

From this time onward we are able to consider these un- 
disputed books of the New Testament as united with the 
canonical Hebrew scriptures, to constitute one Bible accept- 
ed by the body of Christian believers. But the unsatisfac- 
tory nature of oral tradition, and need of written sources 
was, of course, becoming more apparent as the church drew 
farther away in history from Christ and the Apostles. More- 
over, the church was threatened in doctrine and life, by many 
and troublesome heretical sects. There was increasing need 
that the question "What is true Christianity, and what is true 
for a Christian to believe and right for him to do?" should 
receive some authoritative answer. But if the need of an 
answer to this question was increasing, the difficulty of it 



42 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

was also increasing. During this second period, then, the 
key to a knowledge of the historical process by which the 
canon of the New Testament was formed, is to be found 
in this fact: The process is referable to the overcoming, by 
the church catholic, of an original opposition between Jewish 
Christianity, and Paulinism, or Gentile Christianity. It was 
the union of these two principal tendencies, which had earlier 
run along somewhat separate, that made it possible to es- 
tablish a canon of sacred scriptures. Those Christians that 
had Jewish tendencies had yielded somewhat to the sharp 
contrast which Paul found it necessary to draw between the 
spirit, and the letter. But the writers of this period gave 
more emphasis to the permanent character of the Old Testa- 
ment revelation. But this tendency had also, so far been 
softened in its opposition to the Gentile form of Christianity, 
as to permit the writings of Paul, to be placed upon a level 
with those of the Old Testament. Thus the recognition of 
cne Bible, with two classes of books, those of the Old 
covenant, and those of the New, became possible. 

This formation of one biblical canon, to be called by the 
title of "The Scriptures," was completed about the close of 
the second century. But at this time there were still certain 
writings whose position remained doubtful, and a very plain 
distinction between those of the first rank, and those of the 
second rank, among the New Testament writings, was still 
observed. We are therefore compelled to recognize the 
varied uses of the different parts of the Bible, and their dif- 
ferent degrees of value in these uses. 

The church of God has had a varied life, and various 
needs have been required in the support and development of 
that life. It is a valuable function of the church, to be called 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 43 

upon to criticize and test the claims of various writings of 
sacred scripture, and to discriminate the various uses, and 
values, which the different parts of this scripture possess. 
Believers are not called to the acceptance once for all of tra- 
ditional forms of opinion, but to the work of discrimination, 
and to growth, in maturity of judgment. The Bible as a 
whole, has a claim to a divine origin beyond the claims of 
any of its separate books. What one writer leaves undone, 
another may do. The means for correcting errors of any 
kind, as are found within the Bible, are chiefly furnished by 
the Bible itself. The histories of the New Testament for 
example, supplement and correct each other. It is as taken 
together and studied in their relations, that they give us the 
more complete and true picture of what was the life, and 
work of the divine personality of Christ. Its moral and re- 
ligious teachings are all to be regarded in the light in which 
they stand to Him who is the truth of the redeemed, and 
eternal life among men. This is as true of all the writings 
within the biblical canon, as it is of those without. To be a 
part of the Bible does not discharge any book, from its obli- 
gations to conform to this standard. 

Holy scripture has not been given to men under a seal, or 
in the form of diplomatic certainty, and infallibility. As 
far back as we can go in the history of God's people, it has 
ever been the same. The oldest manuscripts of the Old 
Testament are in part, Torah rolls, which were prepared up- 
on parchment, and still earlier upon leather, which contained 
the standard text of the Pentateuch, written without vowel 
points, they are also in part in book form, containing the 
whole of the Old Testament written with the so-called Ma- 
soretic punctuation. These manuscripts are not older than 
the twelfth century after Christ. The process of fixing this 



44 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

text began in the sixth century by indulging in much learned 
controversy, and giving written expression to oral tradition. 
These are the only manuscripts in existence, and they all 
conform to one type. The Hebrew manuscripts earlier than 
the Masoretic text were not punctuated or accented, that is, 
the consonants were written down alone, and in close con- 
nection with each other. The pronunciation of the words, 
and in many cases their meaning, so far as dependent upon 
the vowels, was a matter of oral tradition. The present text, 
then, may be said to reproduce that construction of the sense 
which has prevailed since the Christian era. But it is by far 
the most valuable help which we have, to an understanding 
of what was the real meaning of the earlier unpunctuated 
manuscripts. 

We see then, that our present complete text of the Old 
Testament consists of two elements, namely : The traditional 
way of writing the consonants, and the traditional way of 
pronouncing the words indicated by these consonants, or of 
reading what was written. The farther back inquiry goes 
into the obscurity of the pre-Christian times, the greater be- 
comes the difficulty in securing a pure text. The witnesses 
are far from being in accord. The oldest of these witnesses 
are the Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch, but these vary 
most from the Masoretic text. It is calculated that the 
Septuagint differs from the Hebrew, and accords with the 
Samaritan Pentateuch, in about one thousand places, while 
in certain other cases the Septuagint stands entirely alone. 
Among a certain class of Jews in Christ's time, this imper- 
fect Greek translation had taken the place of the Hebrew 
text, both for public and private reading, and many of the 
New Testament writers quoted from it. It appears then, 
that very great uncertainty exists as to the correct text of the 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 45 

Old Testament, even so far as concerns the manuscripts that 
were in existence where the canon was being closed. But if 
we try to go back to those centuries before the Exile, when 
the older books of the Hebrew scriptures were in process of 
formation, we have absolutely no means except the very un- 
certain conjecture of internal criticism, for telling what was 
the condition of their text. 

The first five books were centuries in the process of for- 
mation, as we now have them, many hands labored upon 
them, their written laws were enacted at different periods, 
and lay neglected and almost unknown through long periods 
of time, and their text was freely handled by the scribes who 
amended and reproduced them. And yet it was this por- 
tion of the Hebrew Bible which the framers of its canon 
regarded most highly, and esteemed most especially in- 
spired. The oldest Hebrew manuscripts are much more 
than a thousand years distant from their originals, and un- 
doubtedly depart from those originals in many particulars. 
And not one of the Greek manuscripts of the New Testa- 
ment, since they differ among themselves in thousands of in- 
stances, can claim to stand as the infallible, the perfectly 
errorless text. It is necessary, then, to admit that we do not 
possess and never can recover the text of this infallible Bible. 
It must have been, if it ever existed at all, the text of the 
original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. But these original 
texts have long since perished ; we can never know precisely 
what the readings were in respect to innumerable disputed 
points. 

In conclusion then we will have to admit that according 
to the facts of history, no form of words at all approach- 
ing a standard of infallible accuracy has been preserved, to 



46 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

disclose to us the eternal truth of that one divine word, which 
is the truth of redemption brought to men in the historical 
process of God's self revelation, culminating in Jesus Christ. 
With certain limits there is wide-spread and unremovable 
uncertainty concerning the text of the Old and New Testa- 
ments. The words which have come down to us in the ex- 
tinct Hebrew and Greek manuscripts cannot be regarded 
as all, and severally, the very words of God. But the word 
of God, the truth of the Gospel in the largest and loftiest 
sense of its phrase, nevertheless remains sure. Its suffi- 
cient, authentic, and authoritative record is the sacred scrip- 
tures of the Old Testament. This record has not been pre- 
served free from those frailties, changes, and errors which 
belong to all human works; but it has been so preserved 
that we know what biblical religion is, and especially what 
true Christianity is, and what is true for a Christian to think, 
and right for a Christian to do. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 47 



Chapter III 
The Great Age of the Bible Stories 

THERE have recently been discovered the laws of 
Hammurabi, the famous king of Babylon, who 
drove out the Elamites, secured the control of the 
whole country, and raised Babylon to a position of political 
and religious predominance, which it continued to hold for 
many centuries. Hammurabi was the author of a code of 
laws which affected all future generations in Babylon and 
Assyria, and even all the Semitic peoples to the Mediter- 
ranean Sea, and was in short, one of the greatest characters 
of history, and an epoch making man 

Robert Francis Harper, Professor of the Semitic lan- 
guages in the University of Chicago, says, "The Monument 
on which the Code of Hammurabi is engraved was found 
in December, 1901, and January, 1902, on the acropolis of 
Susa by an Expedition sent out by the French government 
under the Director General, M. De Morgan. It is a block 
of black diorite, nearly eight feet high, broken into three 
pieces which were easily rejoined. Another fragment was 
found which does not belong to this monument, but which 
contains a text corresponding to a part of this, and this leads 
to the conclusion that another copy of this famous code ex- 
isted in Susa. On the one side of this monument we have a 
picture exhibiting King Hammurabi receiving the laws from 
the Sun God, to which the story of Moses receiving the Ten 
Words from God corresponds. There are many reasons 
for believing that this code of laws was published in many 



48 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

places. Hammurabi was the sixth king of the first dynasty 
of Babylon, and reigned for 55 years, about 2250 B.C. We 
have a good account of his life in the letters which he has 
written and which have been edited with great care by Mr. 
L. W. King. From the Prologue and Epilogue we learn 
that he was a great soldier and a pious god-fearing king, who 
destroyed all his enemies to the north and south, and made 
his people to dwell in peace and security. He codified the 
existing laws that the strong might not oppress the weak, that 
they should give justice to the orphan and widow, and for 
the righting of wrong. He rebuilt cities, and canals, he re- 
stored temples and endowed them with means for sacrifices, 
he re-established cults, he reunited his people. 

This code of laws shows by comparison the source of 
Hebrew laws and the Babylonian influence of the Israelit- 
ish people, and in fact it can be said that all of Palestine 
was a descendant of Babylon. Not in the real sense of 
descent of blood, but in the equally as real sense of descent 
through religion and civilization. How much the Canaanites 
owe to the Accadians whose dominion ceased about 1 500 
years B. C, and whose language began to die out under the 
reign of the Assyrian king Sargon, 720 B. C, we may infer 
from the fact that many religious institutions, legends, and 
customs among the Jewish people were of Accadian origin. 
Thus we know for certain that in their mode of determining 
the time, they already possessed the institution of a week of 
seven days and that the Sabbath was their holy day of rest. 
Further the legend of Creation, of the Tree of Life, and of 
the Deluge mentioned in Genesis, and also in Assyrian rec- 
ords, were well known to the Accadians, and their traditional 
ideas seem to have been established among them in the re- 
mote past, for we find among their ruins, carvings on stone 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 49 

of the Tree of Life, which in the most ancient pictures bears 
fir cones. We may infer that the idea is an old tradition 
which the Accadians brought with them from their former 
and colder home in the fir covered mountains of Media. In 
addition to this we have past recollections of Accadian tra- 
ditions in many Hebrew names which prove beyond a shad- 
ow of a doubt the long lasting influence of the ancient civi- 
lization of Accad. All the rivers of Paradise mentioned 
in Genesis are Babylonian names. 

Since the successful excavation of the Assyrian stone li- 
braries, so many things have been brought to light that we 
have the most positive evidence as to the source and the great 
age of these traditions, the greater part of them coming down 
to us from the old Accadians. 

The Babylonians possessed many legends which have 
been received into the Old Testament, the most striking 
ones being the Legend of the Deluge, of the Tower of Babel, 
of the destruction of corrupt cities by a rain of fire, very 
similar to the stories in Genesis in regard to Sodom and Go- 
morrah. Also, the story of Sargon the First, reigning about 
2000 years B. C, who was rescued from a basket floating 
down the river Euphrates, reminds us of Moses. In the 
legend of the destruction of the cities there occur several 
names which indicate an Accadian source. The legend of 
the Deluge corresponds in all important details with the 
story in Genesis. Babylon and the Euphrates Valley has 
always been a land of deluges. The alluvial low lands 
along the course of all great rivers discharging into the sea 
are exposed to terrible floods, cyclones, and tornadoes, ac- 
companied by tremendous downpours of rain. As late as 
the year 1876, a tornado of this kind came from the Bay of 



50 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

Bengal, accompanied by fearful thunder and lightning, and 
blowing with such terrible force that ships at a distance of 
190 miles were blown into the mouth of the river, and the 
high cyclonic waves uniting with the tide formed one gigantic 
tidal wave, with the result that within a short while an area 
of 141 square miles was covered with water to a depth of 
45 feet and 2 1 5,000 men met their death by drowning. The 
storm raged in this way until it spent itself on the higher 
ground. When we reflect upon this, we can estimate what a 
frightful catastrophe a cyclone of the kind must have meant 
when it came upon the low lands of Babylon in those pri- 
meval days. 

It is now well known that there is an accurate description 
of such a cyclone, line for line, in the Babylon deluge story 
written upon a tablet of stone found in the library of Sar- 
danapalus at Nineveh, a written account of which had ex- 
isted as early as 2000 years before Christ. The sea plays 
the chief part in the story, and the ship of the Babylonian 
Noah is accordingly cast upon a spur of the mountain range 
of Armenia. In other respects it is the original of the deluge 
story so well known to us all. We find written upon this 
tablet a command from the god of the ocean depths to Xisu- 
thros, (who is the Babylonian Noah) to build a ship of a 
specific size, to pitch it thoroughly, and to embark upon it 
his family and all living seed. The party go on board the 
ship, its doors are closed, it is tossed out into the all-destroy- 
ing billows until at length it strands upon a mountain called 
Nizir. Then follows the famous passage, "On the second 
day he brought out a dove and released it, the dove flew 
hither and thither, but as there was no resting place it re- 
turned again." We then read farther how that the swallow 
was released and returned again, until finally the raven find- 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 51 

ing that the water had subsided, returned no more to the 
ship, and how that Noah leaves the vessel, and offers upon 
the mountain top a sacrifice, the sweet savor of which is smelt 
by the gods. 

The whole story precisely as it was written down was car- 
ried by emigrants to Canaan, but owing to the new and en- 
tirely different local conditions, it was entirely forgotten that 
the sea was the chief factor, and so we find two accounts of 
the deluge, which are not only scientifically impossible, but 
mutually contradictory, the one assigning it to a duration of 
365 days, the other to 61 days, and these two different ac- 
counts of the deluge have been worked up into a single story 
in the Bible. These are facts that, so far as signs are con- 
cerned, stand firm and remain unshaken, however tightly 
people on either side of the ocean may continue to close their 
eyes to them. When we reflect that in time past the Coper- 
nican system was offensive, even to such men of genius as 
Luther, we must be quite prepared to find only a tardy 
recognition of the results of Biblical criticism, but the course 
of time will surely bring the light. 

A great many people have seen in our more modern ca- 
thedrals pictures and statues of the four evangelists adorned 
with the four representative beings of the animal creation. 
Matthew is accompanied by an angel, or winged man ; Mark 
by a lion ; Luke by a bull ; and St. John by an eagle. The 
creature represents the cherubim of the Old Testament, and 
heavenly protectors of the gospel writers. They are of a 
more remote age than 'even the Old Testament, for we 
find them on the walls of the ancient royal palaces of Nine- 
veh, and there can be no doubt about it that the Jewish con- 
ception of the cherubim is the heir-loom of a more royal an- 
tiquity. 



52 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

As is well known the Babylonians entertained the idea 
that the Deity employs messengers and angels, and the con- 
ception of cherubim and seraphim and of guardian angels 
attending upon man, is clearly traced back to Babylonian 
origin. A Babylonian ruler required an army of messengers 
to carry his commands into every land, so too the gods must 
have a legion of messengers or angels always ready to do 
them service, messengers with the intelligence of man, and 
therefore of human form, provided with wings to allow them 
to convey the commands of the Deity through the air to the 
inhabitants of the earth. These angel forms are likewise 
endowed with the piercing eyes and the swift wings ot the 
eagle, whilst those whose principal duty was to guard the 
approach to the Deity were credited with having the un- 
conquerable strength of the bull or the fear-inspiring majesty 
cf the lion, so that the angels of Babylonia and Assyria, like 
those of Ezekiel's vision, are very often represented as 
winged bull shaped cherubim with the faces of men. We 
also meet with other representations of angels such as that 
found in one of the palaces of the king which has the closest 
possible resemblance to our conception of angels. We should 
always keep a warm place in our hearts for these noble and 
radiant figures which art has made so dear, and so familiar 
to us, but demons and devils, whether they hover before us 
as the enemies of man or as the earliest foes of God, should 
be banished forever, once and for all, since we do not pro- 
fess the dualism of ancient Persia. 

As to the origin of these old Bible stories there can be no 
doubt that Chaldea was the original home of these stories 
and that the Jews received them originally from the Baby- 
lonians. The numerous illustrations that have been found 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 53 

on early Assyrian and Babylonian seals prove that the 
legends were well known and formed part of the literature 
of the country from 1 500 to 3000 years B. C. There is no 
doubt but what these old legends existed in several versions 
of the creation stories we possess, two accounts of which vary 
considerably, but one of them which is narrated on seven 
tablets is of special interest to us, not only on account of its 
being the main source of the first chapter of Genesis, but also 
because it possesses in it one of the oldest documents in 
which the evil one is mentioned. He is called in Assyrian, 
Tiantu, and is represented as the serpent of darkness, the 
wicked serpent, and the mighty and strong serpent. That 
the Bible account of creation was derived from these sources 
can as little be doubted, as that of other legends, not only 
because of its familiarity in several important features, but 
also because frequently the very words used in Genesis are 
the same coincidences as the creation of woman from the rib 
of man, and the sending out of birds from the ark to ascer- 
tain whether the waters had dried up. 

Our excavators have not as yet found a report of the fall 
oi Adam and of the serpent that seduced Adam and Eve 
to taste the fruit of the tree of life. There is, however, a 
great possibility that some similar legend existed, as we are 
in possession of pictures which represent two persons seated 
under a tree, and a serpent near by. The tree of life is an 
idea which must have been very popular among the Assyr- 
ians, for our artists do not tire of portraying it in every form. 
It may date back to that remote period when the fruits of 
trees constituted a very important part of the food which 
sustained human life. 



54 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

It will be seen from this that these records of creation, 
bear a very striking resemblance to the account given in the 
first chapter of Genesis. In every case the history of the cre- 
ation is divided into seven successive acts, in each case the 
present world has been preceded by a watery chaos. 

The order of the creation agrees in two accounts. First: 
the light, then the creation of the firmament of heaven, and 
afterward, the appointment of the celestial bodies for signs, 
and for seasons, and for days and years, and next the crea- 
tion of the beast and creeping things. In the Assyrian rec- 
ord ths earth seems not to have been made until after the for- 
mation of the heavenly bodies instead of before it, as in 
Genesis, and the seventh day is a day of work instead of 
rest, while there is nothing corresponding to the statement 
iii Genesis that the spirit of God moved on the face of the 
waters. 

It is undoubtedly true that the old Bible legends, instead 
of losing their value by being proved to be much older, gain 
an additional value. They are now more interesting to us 
than ever. Formerly the Biblical account of the creation 
was thought to be a very beginning of the religions of man. 
but now we know that it is merely a milestone of the road. 
It is neither the beginning nor the end. It is simply the sum- 
mary of the long history of anxious inquiry and speculation 
which would have remained forgotten had we not discovered 
the Assyrian tablets bearing witness to the inspirations that 
preceded the composition of the Old Testament, but there 
is one thing which seems strange, the Chaldean belief in the 
immortality of the soul found no response in the literature of 
the Jews. Did they refuse to incorporate it into the Hebrew 
conception because they disbelieved it, or did they merely 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 55 

ignore it because they were too realistic and would not allow 
themselves to be carried away by illusions even of the lofti- 
est kind? 

While we undoubtedly recognize the superiority of the 
Hebrew account we must, in justice to the Assyrian and 
Babylonian civilization, infer that the belief in one God was 
by no means an exclusive Jewish belief, for we find mono- 
theistic hymns of great strength and religious beauty both in 
Egypt and in Babylon long before the existence of the 
people of Israel, and in all probability the monotheistic 
party of Babylon or their brethren in Egypt, were the found- 
ers of monotheism. It is certain that the philosophers of 
Egypt and Babylon were not without influence upon the 
development of the Jewish religion. 

We can go back much farther in the remote past and find 
in the ruins of Nippur, the same old stories in a little different 
form still, which has been found written on tablets of stone 
by a previous civilized race that existed in that country some- 
where between 5000 and 6000 years B. C. Up to the pres- 
ent time very little is known of this pre-historic race but from 
the ruins found in those ancient cities, buried from 60 to 80 
feet beneath the sands of the desert, large libraries have been 
unearthed that give sufficient evidence that they were a 
people far advanced in civilization. 

In estimating the moral and religious teaching of Israel a 
certain moderation is desirable. That during the period of 
their history up to the exile, Judah, as well as Israel, kings 
as well as people, were victims of a tendency towards the 
worship of heathen gods in heathen Canaan, as persistent as 
it was natural, must to a large extent be accepted. That 



56 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

being so, it appears as though it were a particularly unfortu- 
nate proceeding, when certain over-zealous spirits represent 
the ethical level of Israel, as vastly superior to that of the 
Babylonians. It is true the Babylonian methods of waging 
war were cruel, sometimes even barbarous, but the conquest 
of Canaan by the Hebrew tribes was also accompanied by 
the shedding of streams of innocent blood, the capture 
of great and goodly cities not their own, the de- 
struction of houses full of all good things, of the 
wells, vineyards, olive trees. It was preceded by 
the conquering of hundreds of places both east and 
west of the Jordan, which means the ruthless massacre 
of all the inhabitants, men, women, and children. As re- 
gards justice and righteousness in state and people, the long 
continued denunciations by the prophets of Israel and Judah 
of the oppression of the poor, of widows and orphans, in 
conjunction with the accounts of the slaying of prophets and 
kings, afford us a glimpse of grave corruption on the part of 
kings and people alike. While the continuance of Ham- 
murabi's kingdom for nearly two thousand years might well 
serve to justify the application to it of the words, "Righteous- 
ness exalteth a nation." 

It is my special object to show, not only the stories of these 
ancient peoples, but some of the stories that have come down 
to us, of the survivals of the legendary, and mythical stories 
found in Hebrew literature, which affect the religious con- 
ceptions of the present day. We should seek the truth in 
order to arrive at the truth of many of these Israelitish stories. 
I believe that this is the only truly faithful and religious 
manner in which to treat these stories. Doubtless to some 
accustomed to another point of view such a method of hand- 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 57 

ling Bible tales, and Bible histories, seems profane, and 
shocking. There is, in the treatment of any religious book, 
a tendency to set that book apart, from worldly things and 
to surround it with a halo of mystery and awe, which ob- 
scures its real character and meaning, its true origin, and its 
proper relation to the present. 



58 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 



Chapter IV 

Is There a Devil, and is He the 
Author of Evil? 

A GREAT many people cling to the idea of a per- 
sonal devil and think he has a very strong hold 
on humanity, and humanity is very reluctant to 
let him go, although he is accused of wrecking the lives 
of thousands, deceitfully enticing men into all kinds of 
vice, bringing anguish and misery and death and eternal 
suffering. Poor devil — his faults are no doubt much ex- 
aggerated by the clergy, and yet there are a great many 
good people in the world who put a great deal of credence 
in the old superstition of the devil's existence, but in spite 
of the devil's shrewdness in luring men down to torment, 
there is no human conscience that exists, but what can be 
reclaimed in some way, if not in penitence and tears, if 
you have the price, the Pope will sell a specially reserved 
seat in his heaven, if you only give him the cash while here 
on earth. Everything costs that we get. Nothing is given 
free in this world, save the air and the sunshine, everything 
else must be bought, with blood, tears and groans occa- 
sionally, but oftenest with money. 

The devil is a very fascinating personage, and is the 
subject of many a fine story. Picture him as falling from 
heaven. Lucifer — Son of the Morning — what a title and 
what a birthright; to be born of the morning implies him 
to be a creature formed of translucent light, undefiled, with 
all the warm rays of a million orbs of day, coloring his 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 39 

bright pathway, and all the luster of fiery planets, flaming 
in his eyes. Splendid and supreme at the right hand of 
Deity itself he stood, this majestic arch-angel and before 
his unwearied vision rolled the grandest creative splendors 
of God's thoughts and dreams. All at once he perceives 
in the vista of embryonic things a new small world, and on 
it a being forming itself slowly, as it were, into the angelic 
likeness, a thing weak yet strong, sublime yet foolish, a 
strange paradox destined to work its way through all the 
phases of life, till imbibing the very breath and soul of the 
Creator, it finally should attain conscious immortality, eternal 
joy. Then Satan, full of wrath, turned on the Master of the 
spheres, and flung his reckless defiance, crying aloud, "Wilt 
thou make of this slight poor creature an angel, even as I. 
I do protest against thee and condemn. Lo, if thou makest 
Man in our image I will destroy him utterly, as unfit to 
share with me the splendors of thy wisdom, the glory of thy 
love. And the voice Supreme, in accents terrible and beau- 
tiful, replied, "Satan, son of the morning, full well dost 
thou know that never can an idle wasted word be spoken 
before Me. For free will is the gift of the immortals, there- 
fore, what thou sayest, thou must needs do. 

"Fall, proud spirit from thy high estate, thou and thy com- 
panions with thee, and return no more till man himself re- 
deem thee. Each human soul that yields unto thy tempting 
shall be a new barrier set between thee and heaven, each one 
ihat of its own choice doth repel and overcome thee, shall 
lift thee nearer thy lost home ; when the world rejects thee, 
1 will pardon, and again receive thee ; but not till then." 

Such is the interpretation of some of the legends in regard 
to Satan. But this old theory of Satan being cast down 



60 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

from heaven, and the idea that the universe was made com- 
plete at creation's dawning, and many other beliefs, that the 
world has outgrown, which are found embodied in the old 
mythologies, where also the fall story in Genesis originated, 
and where the doctrine of the fall of man and origin of sin 
as held by all Christendom, are almost abandoned by all the 
more advanced thinkers of the religious world, and the)' 
appear to be relegating this conception to the realms of myth, 
and are becoming more and more reconciled to the evolution- 
ary science as held by the great thinkers of the day. And 
the belief that there is abroad in the land, an evil being tre- 
mendous in power, vast in intelligence, and boundless in 
malignity, is already well nigh abandoned. Spencer, in his 
philosophy seeks to show, that all of those religious beliefs 
have slowly developed in about the same way as our phy- 
sical bodies. And he looks back at what man must have 
been in his earlier stages of existence and he finds it easy to 
show that in the thunder that scared him and the lightning 
that smote him, in the earthquake, the storm, and the dark- 
ness, he found evidence of an evil spirit which became to 
him a power of evil, his first idea of a devil. All primitive 
people held to the idea that all suffering and death must be 
the work of an evil spirit. It was perfectly natural, he says, 
that the ignorance of primitive man should invent the devil 
as a part of his mythology. It was the simplest explanation 
of the mysteries that appeared around him in the world. 

When we come to gather up the facts concerning the 
primitive worship of man, the conviction impresses itself upon 
us, that the worship of an evil spirit naturally precedes the 
worship of a good spirit. There are many instances in which 
we can trace a transition from the lower form of Devil wor- 
ship to the higher form of God worship, and there seems to be 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 61 

no exception to the rule that fear is always the first incentive 
to religious worship. This is the reason why the dark figure 
of the devil, or an evil deity, looms up as the most important 
personage in the remote past of almost every faith. Devil 
worship is the first stage in the evolution of religion, for they 
feared the bad, and not the good. 

All Indians have a lively conviction of the power of an 
evil principle over them, in many there dawns also a glimpse 
of the good, but they revere the one less than they fear the 
other. It might be thought that they hold the Good Being 
weaker in relation to the fate of man than the evil. 

In fact among all heathen nations the worship of the 
devil actually continues until the positive power of good is 
recognized and man finds out by experience that the good, 
although its progress may be ever so slow, is always victori- 
ous in the end. It is natural then that the power that makes 
for good, is by and by recognized as the supreme ruler of all 
powers, and then the power of evil ceases to be an object of 
awe, it is no longer worshiped or sacrifice offered to it, but 
opposition is set up against it, and the search light of reason 
in the development of mankind creates a growing confidence 
that a final victory of justice, right and truth, will prevail. 

The starting point in the Christian conception of a devil 
is undoubtedly the narrative contained in the third chapter 
cf Genesis. We find that fact asserted by a great many writ- 
ers, as well as in the definition of devil as given in the Ency- 
clopedia Britannica : "Devil is the name which has been giv- 
en in the New Testament, and in Christian theology to a su- 
preme evil personality supposed to rule over a kingdom of 
evil spirits, of whom he is chief, and to be the restless and 
unfailing adversary of God and man." 



62 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

The Hebrew term denoting adversary or Satan, is also 
applied to this supreme evil spirit, or prince of the kingdom 
of evil. There can be no question that such an evil spirit is 
frequently spoken of in the New Testament. He is desig- 
nated by various names in addition to these mentioned such 
as the Tempter, Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils, The Strong 
One, The Wicked One, The Enemy, or The Hostile One. 
Throughout the Gospels these terms are used interchangeably 
and in all cases seem to denote the same active power or per- 
sonality of evil outside of man and exercising influence over 
him. It may be a question how far Christ himself acknow- 
ledges the existence of such a power, but there can be no 
question that such a being was recognized in the current be- 
lief of the Jews in His time. But it is also certain that this 
belief amongst the Jews was one of gradual growth, and is 
not to be traced in the Old Testament in any such definite 
form as we meet with it in the New. The expression Satan, 
ii indeed found in the Old Testament, but only five times, if 
so frequently, as a proper name — thrice in the book of Job 
( 1 :6, 1 2 ; 2-1 ) once in the opening of the 2 1 st chapter of 1 st 
Chronicles and in Zechariah (3-1 ). In all the other places 
where the word occurs, Satan is used in its common sense 
of adversary, a sense in which it also occurs in the Gospels, 
in the well known passage, Matthew 16:23, where our Lord 
addresses Peter, "Get thee behind me, Satan," or adver- 
sary. The book of Chronicles and Zechariah are indisput- 
ably amongst the latest writings of the Old Testament, and 
although the date of Job is unsettled, it may also be pre- 
sumed to belong to a late period in the history of Revelation. 
In the earlier prophetic literature of the Hebrews, there is 
no recognition of any spirit of evil at war with Jehovah. All 
power and dominion are, on the contrary, clearly ascribed to 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 63 

Jehovah himself, who is supreme in heaven, on earth, and 
under the earth. The connection of Satan with the serpent in 
the Garden of Eden is an inference of later dogmatic opin- 
ion, arising probably out of the use of the expression, "Old 
Serpent," applied to Satan in Revelation 20:2, but receives 
no countenance from the Scripture narrative itself, which 
speaks of the serpent purely as an animal and pronounces 
a curse against him with reference to his animal nature solely. 

The idea of a distinct personality of evil, therefore, is 
not to be found in the earlier Hebrew Scriptures, and is, 
in fact inconsistent with cardinal principles of the other He- 
brew theology that Jehovah was the sole source of all power, 
the author both of good and evil, who hardened Pharaoh's 
heart, and sent a lying spirit among the prophets of Ahab 
(I Kings 22-20). Even in the later Scriptures in which 
Satan is spoken of as a distinct person, there is little or no 
analogy betwixt what is said of such a person in the Scrip- 
tures and what is said of him in the New Testament. 

The Satan of the book of Job is described as coming 
among the sons of God to present himself before the Lord. 
He is the image of malice, restlessness, and envy — the will- 
ing messenger of evil to Job ; but he is not represented as the 
impersonation of evil, or as a spiritual assailant of the patri- 
arch. He is really a delegated agent in the hands of Je- 
hovah to execute His will, and the evils with which he assails 
Job are outward evils. The picture is quite different from 
that of the archangel ruined, or the devil, or Satan, of later 
theology. The question then arises, as to the special source 
of the conception of the devil as a fallen and evil spirit. 
The explanation commonly given of this conception by our 
modern critical schools is that it sprang out of the intercourse 



64 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

of the Jews with the Persians during their period of exile. 
In the Persian mythology it is well known that a personal 
power of evil was conspicuously recognized. The Persian 
religion divided the world betwixt two opposing self-ex- 
istent deities, the one good and the other evil, but both alike 
having a share in creation and in man. Ormuzd or Ahur- 
amazda, was holy and true, and to be honored and wor- 
shiped. But Ahriman or Ahramaimu the evil minded, the 
spirit of darkness was no less powerful, and claimed an equal 
share of man's homage. These were the good and the evil 
in thought, word, and deed. Man has to choose betwixt 
the two. He cannot serve both. With this dualistic system 
the Jews came in contact during their captivity at Babylon, 
and are supposed to have retained permanent traces of it in 
their subsequent theology. The conception of the devil, 
and of a lower kingdom of demons, or devils, is the evident 
illustration of this. The case is put in this way by a Chris- 
tian writer of moderation and knowledge: "That the He- 
brew prophets had reiterated their belief in one God with 
the most profound conviction is not to be questioned, but as 
little can it be doubted that as a people the Jews had ex- 
hibited little impulse towards monotheism, or the belief in 
but one God, and that from this time, the period of their 
captivity, we discern a readiness to adopt the Zoroastrian 
demonology. The conception of Satan in the later canonical 
books of Chronicles and Zechariah, is even attributed to 
this source. Thus far Satan had appeared as in the book 
of Job among the ministers of God; but in later books we 
have a closer approximation to the Persian creed. In Zech- 
ariah and the first book of Chronicles, Satan assumes the 
character of Ahriman and appears as the author of evil. 
Still later he becomes the prince of devils, the source of 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 65 

wicked thoughts, the enemy of the Word and Son of God. 
The process by which the Jewish mind worked out this con- 
ception and the whole scheme of demonology, found in the 
New Testament, was of course gradual. The book of 
Wisdom, a product of Alexandrian Jewish thought in the 
second century before Christ, which speaks of the devil hav- 
ing, through envy, introduced evil into the world, is sup- 
posed to represent a stage in this development, and the 
apocryphal books of Enoch and Esdras, the former of which 
is pre-Christian, indicate further stages. 

Another stage is supposed to be marked by the recogni- 
tion of a devil, or evil spirit, under the name of Asmodeus, 
in the Book of Tobit (150 B.C.) There is certainly a 
remarkable analogy betwixt parts of the eschatological, or 
the teaching of the last things, and the teaching of the book 
of Enoch, and other apocryphal books, and that of the 
gospels; which shows that the writers of the gospels were 
more or less influenced by these writings. But the develop- 
ment of Jewish theology as a whole in the ages immediately 
antecedent to Christianity, is still involved in considerable 
obscurity; and the demonology of the New Testament is to 
be regarded as original, and how much is derived or in- 
herited from prior modes of thought. 

It must also be conceded that even should we accept the 
modern critical theory of the rise of the New Testament 
conception of the devil and of demons, there is much in it 
that must be pronounced very different from the Persian 
conception. The devil of the gospels is in some respects 
very unlike the Ahriman of Zoroastrianism. He is in no 
sense a twin creator of man. He has no original share in 
him, and no right to his homage. In the Persian system the 



66 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

warfare of good or evil is a warfare of balanced forces. But 
the evil personality of the New Testament, powerful as he 
is and always the enemy of the divine, is yet a subordinate 
and inferior being. He is the tempter of the Son of God 
and the enemy of man. He has power on earth, and even 
a certain power over the Son of Man, and yet the Son can 
restrain and bid him get behind Him. The subordinated 
forces of evil — the demons — are all subject to Christ. They 
hear his word and obey it. In short, the devil of the New 
Testament is, in comparison with the source of evil recog- 
nized by Zoroastrianism, a limited power. He is a sub- 
ordinate although insurrectionary spirit, working by spiritual 
means upon the heart of man, and in no sense a native power 
having an original or creative hold of him. This sets the 
gospel conception on a higher level than the Persian, and 
proves that the Jewish mind, supposing that it did borrow 
certain impulses from the Persian religion with which it came 
in contact in the period of exile, yet wrought out the con- 
ception in the depth of its own religious and moral con- 
sciousness within the sphere of revealed truth which was 
its great educational medium. The idea of a personal 
devil was therefore so far a native growth of the Jewish 
rnind working upon hints contained, although not developed, 
ir the earlier Hebrew Scriptures. It is evident from various 
passages, both of the Pentateuch and of the prophetic Scrip- 
tures, that the Hebrews were cognizant of evil beings sup- 
posed to dwell in darkness and waste places. The names 
applied to those beings in these scriptures are various — 
sometimes they are called Seirim and sometimes Shedarim, 
probably a name of demigods, both phrases being trans- 
lated devils in our authorized version of the Pentateuch. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 67 

This translation suggests later associations; but such ex- 
pressions plainly denote a belief in evil beings, the survival, 
probably in the Hebrew consciousness of fragments of an 
older native faith which deified the powers of evil as well 
as of good. Some have traced a similar survival in the name 
Azazel, translated in our version Scape-goat (Leviticus 16: 
8), which has been supposed to represent an evil being 
harvesting the desert, to which was devoted the goat sent 
away on the great day of atonement. This opinion is dis- 
puted by others on grounds both philological and theo- 
logical. But it may be almost certainly assumed that, with 
all the jealous monotheism of the Jews there was an under- 
growth of darker conceptions, pointing to evil existences op- 
posed to the divine, and that to some extent the later idea of 
the devil sprang out of this natural growth in the Hebrew 
mind of an evil side to nature and to life. This process of 
growth may have been indebted to this source. But it was 
also largely original, and at the end, as at the beginning, 
the Jewish and Christian conceptions of the devil and his 
angels were very distinct from those of the Persian faith. 
They belong to a higher level of thought, and are the pro- 
duct of a more advanced stage of moral and spiritual feel- 
ing. The idea of the devil so clearly expressed in the New 
Testament passed as a dominant factor into the early Chris- 
tian theology, acquiring for many centuries an always deep- 
er hold on the popular religious imagination. 

In the writings of the fathers of the second and third cen- 
turies the devil plays an important part. The whole of the 
Roman imperial system and all that opposed the progress of 
the gospel, was identified with his kingdom. Satan was the 
prince of this world, he was the rival and caricature of the 
divine. "Satan," said Tertullian "is God's ape," and the 



68 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

saying passed into a proverb. He fell by pride and arro- 
gance and envy of the divine creation. He was, according 
tr> Cyprian, the author of all heresies and delusions ; he held 
man, by reason of his sin, in rightful possession, and man 
could only be rescued from his power by the ransom of 
Christ's blood. This extraordinary idea of a payment, or 
satisfaction to the devil being made by Christ as the price 
of man's salvation is found both in Irenaeus and in Origen's 
teachings, and may be said to have held its sway in the 
church for nearly a thousand years, and even to some extent 
among Christians of today. And yet Origen is credited with 
the opinion that, bad as the devil was, he was not altogether 
beyond hope of pardon. In this as in other respects the 
early Alexandrian school had a milder and broader type of 
thought than the prevailing theology of the church. Oc- 
casionally in later times the milder opinion was expressed, 
as by Gregory in the fourth century; but gradually it van- 
ished, and the devil was drawn by theological pencil in 
darker and more terrible colors. Augustine greatly helped 
to strengthen and confirm the darker view and to give in 
this as in other things, a gloomier tinge to religious thought. 

During the middle ages the belief in the devil was absorb- 
ing — saints conceived themselves and others to be in con- 
stant conflict with him. It is hardly possible for us now to 
imagine to what a degree this belief controlled men's whole 
lives. It was the one fixed idea with everyone, particularly 
from the 13 th to the 15 th century — the period at which we 
may consider this superstition to have reached its climax. 
The superstition showed certainly but slight signs of yielding 
in the 1 5th or even the 1 6th or 1 7th centuries. Luther lived 
in a constant consciousness of contact and opposition with 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 69 

the evil one. At his study, in bed, or in his cell, the devil 
was incessantly interfering with his work or rest. As he was 
going to begin his studies he heard a noise which he immed- 
iately interpreted as proceeding from his enemy. "As I 
found he was about to begin again, I gathered together my 
books and got into bed. Another time in the night I heard 
him above my cell walking in the cloister; but as I knew it 
was the devil I paid no attention to him and went to sleep." 
Again he says, "Early this morning, when I awoke the 
fiend came and began disputing with me. 'Thou art a great 
sinner,' said he. I replied, 'Canst thou not tell me some- 
thing new, Satan?' " 

This realism of belief in an evil power near to man, and 
constantly assailing him, continued more or less all through 
the 1 7th century, and was especially strong, as Mr. Buckle 
has shown in his well-known volumes, in Scotland. He has 
somewhat over-charged his picture, but he represents at the 
same time indisputable facts which leave no doubt that the 
clergy and people alike imagined that the devil was always 
and literally at hand — that he was haunting them, speaking 
to them, and tempting them. Go where they would he was 
there. With the rise of a rationalistic temper throughout 
Europe, in the 1 8th century, this belief in the pervading in- 
fluence of diabolic agency began to disappear. The sense 
of the supernatural decayed in all directions, and especially 
the old belief in the arbitrary control exercised by an evil 
power over human destiny. And while the religious im- 
pulse has gained greatly since then and shown renewed vigor 
in the religious doctrines and precepts taught by Christ and 
His apostles; it cannot be said that the earlier faith in the 
operations of a personal devil has acquired the prominence 
in religious life and thought it previously occupied. It 



70 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

may be still the prevailing opinion of Christendom that 
there is an evil power working in the world opposed to the 
divine; but whether this power is personal or how far it 
touches the human will, or again, whether there is a subter- 
ranean kingdom of demons with a prince of demons or devil 
at their head, and how far such a kingdom has any relation 
to human destiny, are all questions that must be held to be 
questionable, or maintained with very doubtful confidence 
in any section of the Christian church. It can be maintained 
with some degree of positiveness that a marked change in the 
attitude of Christian belief has taken place in the last few 
years, in regard to Satan, as a fallen majesty, and a per- 
sonal power of evil in the world. In fact, the idea of a devil 
is certainly no longer held by the bulk of Christians to be 
the recognized source for evil over human life and exper- 
ience. 

The teaching of modern science has brought about a fun- 
damental change in our views of the work of creation, and 
in our ideas of the evil which seems to form so inseparable a 
part of that work. It is, however, very doubtful whether 
the practical effect of that change on the religious thought 
of our day, has been at all adequately realized. 

Until the past few years, the orthodox creed of the mod- 
ern world, upon this matter, was an extremely simple one. 
That creed consisted in the belief that about 6000 years 
ago, a perfectly good, and an absolutely omnipotent cre- 
ator, made the world complete, fully developed, entirely 
perfect, but the devil cunningly introduced evil into it. It 
was a simple-minded, but bold and brilliant speculation, 
that may well have appeared to any thoughtful observer of 
the world around, to be quite probable, quite in harmony 
with all the facts of daily life, and eminently reasonable. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 71 

After many generations had believed this mistaken idea 
of creation, they regarded this poetic speculation as a mat- 
ter of history, a heaven inspired statement of fact. It could 
have been nothing more than a flight of imagination, scan- 
ning the whole range of created things, and in the fullest 
freedom of thought, pondering on the origin of good and 
evil in the world around. That it was nothing more than 
this, that it should never have been taken as a statement of 
fact, and that it has no claim whatever to inspiration, in the 
theological sense of the word, seems now to be allowed by 
most persons competent to judge of the matter. And yet it 
would be a very difficult undertaking to estimate the won- 
derful influence that that old account of creation has exerted 
upon mankind. True or false, it has at least done this — 
it has for long centuries enabled millions of men to believe 
implicitly in the goodness of God. 

God is good, and all that is good in the world is to be as- 
cribed to Him. The devil is bad, and all that is evil around 
us is to be ascribed to him. This was the simple faith of 
the writer of that old account of creation, and it has since 
been the faith of unnumbered generations who have never 
thought of questioning its truth. 

But science has entirely repudiated that old account of 
the origin of things. Neither in the world of matter, nor in 
the world of mind is there, we are now assured, anything 
like a creation of the perfect and complete. Such an idea 
has been wholly abandoned. 

It is all a matter of germ growth, of development, of un- 
folding, of evolution. 



72 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

The heavens above, the earth beneath, man himself, his 
physical frame, and his mental and moral constitution, his 
thoughts, his hopes, his fears, his loves and hates, his habits 
and propensities, his beliefs, his ideals, yes, even his concep- 
tions of God and the devil, have all been evolved. 

Whatever creation there has been, we are now told upon 
consensus of authority, which it seems folly to disregard, 
has been a creation not of a perfect world or of perfect life, 
but of elementary matter, of rudimentary germs, and every- 
thing beyond that has been evolved by virtue of principles 
inherent in that matter, and in those germs. Man instead of 
having been created in a state of perfection from which he 
has fallen, has in fact struggled upwards from lower forms 
of life. 

We now begin to recognize the fact more and more, that 
a very great change has taken place in the highest human 
thought, that may result in the total subversion of the old 
theory of creation. That theory assumed the creatorship, 
the fatherhood.the rulership of the world by a Being of 
entire goodness, and it put all responsibility for evil upon 
a second power in the universe. 

The new theory altogether eliminates that second power, 
and it ascribes the whole system of created things, good or 
bad, whichever way we may choose to call it, to an all wise 
Being who controls all things by fixed and unalterable laws. 
The play of these blind and pitiless forces is summed up 
in the word Nature. 

The old theory began with a perfect creation designed, 
and actually carried out with a view to the entire happiness 
and good of every living thing, from the moment of con- 
scious life. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 73 

The new theory begins with an imperfect creation, and 
works up, or appears to be working up, to a perfect ideal to 
be attained after countless ages of strife and suffering, and 
very largely by the instrumentality of every kind of wrong 
and oppression, of cruelty and injustice, of disease and acci- 
dent. 

By the old philosophy of creation, the welfare and hap- 
piness of every individual living thing was intended. Ac- 
cording to the new, the individual life is of no moment 
whatever, and wherever necessary is ruthlessly sacrificed to 
the advancement of the type. The old account of creation 
made evil something altogether apart from the intention and 
the actual work of the Creator; it was sin and rebellion 
against Him. 

The new view recognizes evil as a part and parcel of the 
system of things, a temporary and vanishing part, but never- 
theless, absolutely indispensable to the progress of life. By 
the old theory the Creator had nothing to do with evil, ac- 
cording to revelation of modern science, He uses it, and 
works by means of it ; it is part of His scheme of things. 

The natural order of things has always continued from 
>he beginning, the same as now, and all created organic be- 
ings have risen from a lower to a higher, man included, and 
according to the laws of inheritance, man has always re- 
tained, through inheritance from past generations, to some 
extent, some of the fierce passions, inhuman ferociousness, 
revenge, hate, and savage propensities, that characterize his 
ancestral relations before prehistoric man, even when he 
was no more than any other animal, in the scope of his 
mental vision. 



74 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

If we accept the theory of evolution, as being an estab- 
lished fact, and that a beneficent Creator has conceived a 
plan whereby all things work together for good in the uni- 
verse that he has created, there is no need of assuming that 
there is a second power in existence who is the author of 
evil. It has no author, no necessity for one. It is a gradual 
development, an awakened consciousness from animal in- 
stinct in the strife for existence. Evil is an inherited pro- 
pensity from the first animal, man, that was created with all 
other animals, and took place on this earth with perfect 
freedom to work out their own destiny. So man, in work- 
ing out his destiny, has continued to develop through all 
past ages up to the present time, every generation gaining 
something through experience in the struggle and in the con- 
flict, won by their ancestors, that will better fit them to 
meet and overcome the difficulties that make for their good. 

That a beneficent Creator, having deliberately designed 
such a scheme of things, quite perfect in its goodness, its 
order, its harmony, should also have deliberately created an 
evil power to mar its perfection, and to disturb its order and 
harmony, for any purpose whatever, is inconceivable. Some 
claim that God made the devil. If He did make him for the 
purposes of evil, He is responsible for the existence of evil. 

The writer of the Book of Genesis claims that the Creator 
when He framed this majestic scheme, was actuated by 
perfect beneficence, by absolute and loving kindness; that 
He actually called into being a universe without any ele- 
ment of evil, without flaws or faults, and that He made it 
subject to the operations of laws, so perfect in their adjust- 
ment, one with another, that nothing but goodness and 
happiness could possibly have resulted. In perfect goodness. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 75 

and perfect power and wisdom, He made it all. But an 
enemy disturbed the nice adjustment of things. 

The serpent appears very frequently to have been inter- 
preted as the representative of evil in the early conceptions 
of Christians, but that view seems to have been replaced, 
in later years, by the idea of an adversary called Satan, 
who was regarded as an angel, having fallen by pride and 
arrogance, envying God's creation. The belief in Satan 
as held by many Christians today is harmless and tame in 
comparison with the old conception, which was taken seri- 
ously. Satan, it is true, was regarded as the foe of man- 
kind, but there was no doubt about his power, and the idea 
prevailed that his services could easily be procured by those 
ready to surrender to him. With the belief in witchcraft a 
new period begins in the evolution of mankind, and the devil 
came more and more into prominence. The devil becomes 
greater and more respected than ever, indeed, this is the 
classical period of his history, and the prime of his life. 
Contracts were made with the devil in which men surren- 
dered their souls for all kinds of services on his part. In the 
thirteenth century the devil reached the highest point in his 
influence and activity. Nothing extraordinary could happen 
without its being attributed to him, and to the people of the 
middle ages many things, ordinary to us, were very extra- 
ordinary. We find that not only thunder storms, hail storms, 
inundations, diseases, but also unexpected noises, the rustling 
of leaves, the howling of the wind, were attributed to the 
presence of demoniacal influence. The devil played the 
role of a joker in the Passion plays, and his part became 
more and more prominent. In France the idea prevailed that 
the great mysteries should always have not less than four 



76 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

devils. In medieval mysteries God the Father, God the 
Son, and Satan appear on the stage, and the last one is 
practically the main actor in the whole drama. He was the 
intriguer who, after his successful revolution against the 
Lord set up an empire of his own in Hell, and without the 
devil's intrigue the whole plot of man's fall and Christ's sal- 
vation would be impossible. 

The superstitions of the belief in the personal interference 
of the Devil with human affairs have nearly passed away, 
but they have left us an extensive and interesting literature 
which, for all time to come, will remain a rich store for the 
searcher into the natural history of man. There were a 
great many books written in the early Christian time, that 
would throw a great deal of light on what were the pre- 
valent ideas in regard to Satan, if we would only read them. 
The belief in Satan and Hell forms an essential part of early 
Christianity and Christ was believed immediately after his 
death on the cross to have battled with and to have con- 
quered the prince of Hell. Although the oldest manu- 
scripts of the so-called Apostles Creed do not contain the 
passage "descended into Hell," which is an addition of the 
seventh century, there can be no doubt that the idea actually 
prevailed as early as the second century. The gospel of 
Nicodemus, which is commonly regarded as a product of 
the third century, dwells on this part of the Christian belief 
and offers a detailed account of Christ's descent into Hell 
which is found in the Chapters 15 to 26. I will give this 
part of Nicodemus's gospel as it is, to show the teachings 
of the church in that day, as his gospel was used in some of 
the early churches. It is as follows: 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 7 7 

"Satan, the prince and captain of death, said to the prince 
of hell, 'Prepare to receive Jesus of Nazareth himself, who 
boasted that he was the Son of God, and yet was a man 
afraid of death, and said, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful 
even unto death," besides he did many injuries to me and 
to many others ; for those whom I made blind and lame and 
those also whom I tormented with several devils, he cured 
by his word; yea and those whom I brought dead to thee, 
he by force takes away from thee.' 

"To this the prince of hell replied to Satan, 'Who is that 
so powerful prince, and yet a man who is afraid of death? 
For all the potentates of the earth are subject to my power, 
whom thou broughtest to subjection by thy power. But if 
he be so powerful in his nature, I affirm to thee for truth, 
that he is almighty in his divine nature and no man can resist 
his power. When therefore, he said he was afraid of death, 
he designed to ensnare thee, and unhappy it will be to thee 
for everlasting ages.' 

"Then Satan, replying, said to the prince of hell, 'Why 
didst thou express a doubt, and wast afraid to receive Jesus 
of Nazareth, both thy adversary and mine? As for me, I 
tempted him and stirred up my old people, the Jews, with 
zeal and anger against him. I sharpened the spear for his 
suffering; I mixed the gall and vinegar, and commanded 
that he should drink it; I prepared the cross to crucify him, 
and the nails to pierce through his hands, and feet; and 
now his death is near at hand, I will bring him hither, sub- 
ject both to thee and me.' 

"Then the prince of hell answering, said, 'Thou saidst 
to me just now, that he took away the dead from me by 



78 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

force. They who have been kept here till they should live 
again upon earth, were taken away hence, not by their own 
power, but by prayers made to God, and their Almighty 
God took them from me. Who, then, is that Jesus of Naz- 
areth that by his word hath taken away the dead from me 
without prayer to God? Perhaps it is the same who took 
away from me Lazarus, after he had been four days dead, 
and did stink and was rotten, and of whom I had possession 
as a dead person, yet he brought him to life again by his 
power.' 

"Satan, answering, said to the prince of hell, 'It is the 
very same person, Jesus of Nazareth,' which, when the 
prince of hell heard, he said to him, 'I adjure thee by the 
powers which belong to thee and me, that thou bring him 
not to me. For when I heard of the power of his word, I 
trembled for fear, and all my impious company were at the 
same time disturbed; and we were not able to detain Laz- 
arus, but he gave himself a shake, and with all the signs of 
malice he immediately went away from us; and the very 
earth in which the dead body of Lazarus was lodged, pres- 
ently turned him out alive. And I know that he is Almighty 
God who could perform such things, who is the Saviour of 
mankind. Bring not, therefore, this person hither, for he 
will set at liberty all those whom I hold in prison under 
unbelief and bound with the fetters of their sins, and will 
conduct to everlasting life.' 

"And while Satan and the prince of hell were discours- 
ing thus to each other, on a sudden there was a voice as of 
thunder, and the rushing of winds, saying, 'Lift up your 
gates, O ye princes; and be ye lift up O everlasting gates, 
and the King of Glory shall come in.' 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 79 

"When the prince of hell heard this, he said to Satan, 
'Depart from me and be gone out of my habitations ; if thou 
art a powerful warrior, fight with the King of Glory. But 
what has thou to do with him?' And then he cast him forth 
from his habitations. And the prince said to his impious 
officers, 'Shut the brass gates of cruelty and make them fast 
with iron bars, and fight courageously, lest we be taken 
captives.' 

"But when all the company of saints heard this they spake 
with a loud voice of anger to the prince of hell, 'Open thy 
gates that the King of Glory may come in.' 

"And the divine prophet David cried out, saying, 'Did 
not I when on earth truly prophesy and say, O that men 
would praise the Lord for His goodness and for His won- 
derful works to the children of men. For He hath broken 
the gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron in sunder. He 
hath taken them because of their iniquity, and because of 
their unrighteousness they are afflicted.' 

"After this another prophet, namely, holy Isaiah, spake 
in like manner to all the saints, "Did not I rightly prophesy 
to you when I was alive on earth ? 'The dead men shall live, 
and they shall rise again who are in their graves, and they 
shall rejoice who are in earth; for the dew which is from 
the Lord shall bring deliverance to them.' And I said in 
another place, 'O death, where is thy victory? O death, 
where is thy sting.' 

"When all the saints heard these things spoken by Isaiah, 
they said to the prince of hell, 'Open now thy gates, and 
take away thine iron bars, for thou wilt now be bound, and 
have no power.' 



80 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

"Then there was a great voice, as of the sound of thun- 
der, saying, 'Lift up your gates, O princes ; and be ye lifted 
up, ye gates of hell, and the King of Glory will enter in.' 

"The prince of hell perceiving the same voice repeated, 
cried out as though he had been ignorant, 'Who is that King 
of Glory?' David replied to the prince of hell, and said, 'I 
understand the words of that voice, because I spake them by 
his spirit. And now, as I have above said, I say unto thee, 
the Lord strong and powerful, the Lord mighty in battle: 
he is the King of Glory, and he is the Lord in heaven and in 
earth. He hath looked down to hear the groans of the 
prisoners, and to set loose those that are appointed in death. 
And now, thou filthy and stinking prince of hell, open thy 
gates, that the King of Glory may enter in; for he is the 
Lord of heaven and earth.' 

"While David was saying this, the mighty Lord appeared 
in the shape of a man, and enlightened those places which 
had ever before been in darkness, and broke asunder the 
fetters which before could not be brokn; and with His in- 
vincible power visited those who sat in the deep darkness 
of iniquity, and the shadow of death by sin. Impious Death 
and her cruel officers hearing these things, were seized with 
fear in their several kingdoms, when they saw the clearness 
of the light, and Christ himself on a sudden appearing in 
their habitations; they cried out therefore, and said, 'We 
are bound by thee; thou seemest to intend our confusion 
before the Lord. Who art thou, who hast no sign of cor- 
ruption ; but that bright appearance which is a full proof of 
thy greatness, of which yet thou seemest to take no notice? 
Who art thou, so powerful and so weak, so great and so 
little, a mean person and yet a soldier of the first rank, who 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 81 

can command in the form of a servant as a common soldier ? 
The King of Glory, dead and alive, though once slain upon 
the cross? Who layest dead in the grave, and art come 
down alive to us, and in thy death all the creatures trembled, 
and all the stars moved, and now hast thou thy liberty among 
the dead, and gives disturbance to our legions? Who art 
thou, who dost release the captives that were held in chains 
by original sin, and bringest them into their former liberty? 
Who art thou, who dost spread so glorious and divine a light 
over those who were made blind by the darkness of sin?' 

"In like manner all the legions of devils were seized with 
the like horror, and with the most submissive fear cried out, 
and said, "Whence comes it, O thou Jesus Christ, that thou 
art a man so powerful and glorious in majesty, so bright as 
to have no spot, and so pure as to have no crime?' Then 
the King of Glory trampling upon death, seized the prince' 
of hell, deprived him of all his power, and took our earthly 
father Adam with him to his glory. 

"Then the prince of hell took Satan, and with great in- 
dignation said to him, 'O thou prince of destruction, author 
of Beelzebub's defeat and banishment, the scorn of God's 
angels and loathed by all righteous persons! What in- 
clined thee to act thus? Why didst thou venture without 
either reason or justice, to crucify Him and has brought 
down to our regions a person innocent and righteous, and 
thereby hast lost all the sinners, impious and unrighteous 
persons in the whole world?' 

"While the prince of hell was thus speaking to Satan, 
the King of Glory said to Beelzebub, the prince of hell, 
'Satan the prince shall be subject to thy dominion forever, 



82 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

in the room of Adam and his righteous sons, who are mine.' 
Then Jesus stretched forth his hand and said, 'Come to me, 
all ye saints, who are created in my image, who were con- 
demned by the tree of the forbidden fruit, and by the devil 
and death ; live now by the wood of my cross ; the devil, the 
prince of this world, is overcome, and death is conquered.' 

I will also give a part of the Revelation of St. Peter in 
which is found a detailed description of Heaven and Hell. 
It was counted as one of the canonical books of the New 
Testament and was used in Rome and Alexandria at the 
close of the second century, together with the Revelation of 
St. John. Both writings were received as canonical, but not 
without protest. It is as follows: 

"And I spake to him, the Lord: 'And where are the 
just, and where is the place in which they that possess this 
glory live?' and the Lord showed me a large space outside 
of this world overflowed with light, and the air there was 
illuminated all through by the rays of the sun. And the 
earth itself was blooming with unfading flowers, and filled 
with sweet odors and grandly blossoming and imperishable 
and blessed fruit-bearing plants. Such was the fullness of 
flowers that the sweet odor thence penetrated even unto us. 
The inhabitants of that place were clothed with robes of 
radiant angels; and similar were their robes to their sur- 
roundings. Angels were hovering near them. The glory 
of all who lived there was the same, and with one voice they 
sang in gladness responsive hymns of praise to God the Lord 
in that place. Said the Lord to us: 'That is the place of 
your high priests, of the just people.' " 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 83 

Hell is described as follows: 

"And I saw another place right opposite, rough and being 
the place of punishment. And those who are punished 
there and the punishing angels had their robes dark; as the 
color of the air of the place is also dark : and some people 
were hung up by their tongues: they were those who had 
blasphemed the path of righteousness ; and underneath them 
a bright baneful fire was lit. And there was a pit large and 
filled with burning dirt in which several people stuck who 
had perverted justice, and the avenging angels assaulted 
them. There were others there: women hung up by their 
braids above the seething dirt. They were those who had 
adorned themselves for adultery; but those who had soiled 
themselves with the miasma of the adultery of those women 
were hung up by their feet and their heads in the dirt, arid I 
said, 'I did not believe that I should enter into this place.' I 
saw murderers, and their accomplices thrown into the nar- 
row place filled with evil vermin and tormented by those 
animals and squirming under this punishment. Worms like 
dark clouds assaulted them. The souls of the murdered 
people, however, stood by and gazed at the punishment of 
their murderers and said: 'O God, just is thy judgment.' 

But near unto that place I saw a place of torment in which 
the blood and the stench of the punished flowed down so as 
to make a pool, and there were women to whom the blood 
reached up to the neck; opposite them many infants sat wrn 
had been brought into the world before their season and 
they were weeping. And fiery rays proceeded from the 
children and bit the eyes of the women. For they were the 
cursed ones who had conceived and made abortions. And 
there were men and women standing in flames with half 



84 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

their bodies, and they were thrown into a dark place and 
were scourged by evil spirits. And they were devoured in 
their bowels by worms which do not die. They were those 
who had persecuted the righteous and surrendered them, and 
near by to those again were women and men who bit their 
lips and were punished and received hot irons on their eyes. 
They were those who had blasphemed and betrayed the 
path of righteousness. Opposite them were other men and 
women who bit their tongues and had burning fire in their 
mouths. There were those who bore false witness. In an- 
other place were flints sharper than swords and lances, ren- 
dered burning hot, and women and men in dirty rags were 
wallowing on them in torment. They were the rich and 
those who relying on their riches had not taken compassion 
en orphans and widows, who had a contempt for the com- 
mands of God. In another large field with matter and blood 
and seething dirt were those who take interest and interest 
on interest. Other men and women were thrown from a 
high precipice, and having reached the bottom were urged 
up again by their assaulters to climb the precipice, and were 
then again thrown down, and they were given no respite 
from this torment. They were those who had polluted their 
own bodies. And by the side of this precipice was a place 
which was filled entirely with those who had carved images 
and had worshipped them instead of God, and near them 
were men and women with switches who beat them and did 
not cease from this castigation. And again other women and 
men stood near by, burning, and wriggling, and roasting. 
They were those who had left the path of God." 

Such was the conception of hell in the time of Christ. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 85 

At the beginning of the 1 8th century, which we think of 
as the age of an intellectual dawn, when the rays of light 
begin to spread their shadows over the superstitions of past 
centuries, the night still lingers. And the darkness seems 
more intense than before, for we still find the same old con- 
ception of hell. One of the Jesuit fathers wrote a book in 
which he gives a description of hell, which is as follows: 

"What is hell? A silence ; for all that which is said of hell 
is less than hell itself. No just man can think of it without 
shedding thousands of tears. But do you want to know 
what hell is? Ask Tertullian. He will tell you that hell is 
a deep, dark pit of stench in which all the offal of the whole 
world flows together. Ask Hugo of St. Victor. He will 
answer: 'Hell is an abyss without a bottom, which opens 
the gates of despair, and where all hope is abandoned.' 'It 
is an eternal pool of fire,' says St. John the divine (Rev. 
45 :20) ; its air comes from glowing coals, its light from 
flickering flames. The nights of hell are darkness ; the places 
of rest of the damned are serpents and vipers; their hope is 
despair. O, eternal death! O, life without hope! O, 
misery without end!' " 

Such were some of the popular conceptions of the early 
Christians concerning Hell and Heaven, but our present 
conception of the devil and future punishment is radically 
different. The evolution of the idea of evil as a personifica- 
tion, is one of the most fascinating chapters in history, and 
the changes which characterize the successive phases are in- 
stinctive. The intellectual life of mankind develops by 
gradual growth. The old views as a rule cling with great 
tenacity, and are preserved through many generations, and 
the transformation is of slow growth. There is nowhere 



8 6 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

an absolutely new start. Changes are continually taking 
place in the conceptions of mankind, and only the historical 
connection is preserved. 

To a righteous soul like Isaiah, strong in his allegiance to 
the living God, and unfaltering in his faith in His supreme 
rulership, it is not surprising to find him asserting that supreme 
rulership in the boldest and most uncompromising terms. "] 
am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light, and 
create darkness, I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, 
do all these things." This is the teaching of all the prophets. 
He is the supreme ruler over all things in this world. He 
created man in his own image, a perfect man in all respects, 
and therefore He becomes the father of the human race. He 
placed him in a garden and placed good and evil before 
him, and according to the teachings of the church, he put 
Satan there to tempt him to do evil. How could a loving 
father deliberately place temptation before his children, and 
then as soon as they yield to the tempter, cast them out 
from under his parental care, into a new world, made es- 
pecially for man, whose whole system of things, physical 
and moral, was intended to be good and only good, and 
make him the companion of the devil. He was sent forth 
tc multiply and fill the earth, his only law was His creator's 
own laws of life and progress and heredity, he is to go on 
expanding and developing to the unutterable misery of un- 
born millions, and as time runs on, the most hideous diseases, 
the fiercest passions, the most deadly and destructive strife, 
the darkest superstitions, the most revolting cruelties, every 
phase and form of evil that have racked and tormented the 
world, lie out before that prescient gaze. With all of this 
fore-knowledge, now imagine a perfectly designed universe 
of infinite intricacy and complexity and of the most exquisite 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 87 

delicacy of balance and adjustment, filled with all kinds of 
creatures that God had created, nothing lacking in its 
original design, a perfect world where all were to dwell to- 
gether in perfect peace and harmony. Then imagine that 
while such a system of things was being planned and evolved, 
a being such as I have before depicted was looking on, a 
God-like being with creative and administrative powers, with 
intellectual resources, with knowledge and fore-knowledge 
probably inferior only to those of the Creator himself, but 
actuated by malignity, instead of goodness. This stupendous 
malignant onlooker knows how to impose his will upon this 
being that God has made in his own image so he disturbs the 
beautiful harmony in the world, by inducing man to do all 
kinds of wrong, until his thoughts become continually evil ; 
and God repented that he had made man and sent a flood 
and destroyed every living thing except Noah and what he 
took into the ark. Such have been the religious conceptions 
that have come down through the past history of the 
churches. And so this endless dwelling on the ancient con- 
ceptions of primitive man, has not cleared away. 

Still the demons, these embodiments of the ancient fear, 
live on in their lower plane. They survive long after the 
better understanding of nature has forced the thought of all 
men from the doctrine of the plurality of gods, or invisible 
beings superior to man governing the world, to the concep- 
tion of divine control. Yet, even when this end has been 
substantially obtained, when the idea of the supreme, benefi- 
cent God is established as an article of faith for which every 
thing is sacrificed, so persistent is the ancient demonology, 
that some think its fiends have to be kept for the torment 
of mankind. A most curious thing in the history of thought 
is that in which is written the history of the conflict between 



88 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

the teachings of Christ and the olden worship of the fearful. 
Long after the religion of perfect love and self-devotion 
gained an apparent control over the minds of men, the real 
mastery remained with the demons, those brutal conceptions 
of early man born of his inherited fears. Even now they 
hold their place in the minds of most of those who profess 
themselves Christians. 

It seems strange that people living in this age of enlight- 
ened reason, and possessing every opportunity of knowing 
the history of the past experiences of mankind in relation 
to the many false religious conceptions of evil have not come 
to a right conclusion as to its origin. He has ever been try- 
ing to arrive at some definite conclusion as to its origin and 
manufactured all kinds of absurd and ridiculous explanations 
to account for it, as though it was something that did not 
belong to this world, and that there was no way to account 
for it unless some mighty power has forced it upon the human 
race. It is easy enough to understand why primitive man in 
his ignorance, as to his environment, and as to the relation 
that he sustained to all God's created beings, that he could 
not comprehend the natural phenomena around him. But 
why is it, that when man has arrived at the enlightened age 
in which we now live, and understands so well the natural 
phenomena of nature, and can see the forces that are at 
work in the development of the race from its origin to the 
present, that he is so persistent in trying to perpetuate the 
idea that evil emanates from some mighty power antagon- 
istic to the divine purpose? And still at the same time hold- 
ing to the idea that God has ever been striving with man to 
raise him up above the brute creation, to a clearer concep- 
tion of right doing, and revealing to him at various times in 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 89 

the past, his will concerning us, demonstrating beyond a 
doubt that he is on man's side for the upbuilding and de- 
velopment of the race. 

It seems so inconsistent and contradictory to the divine will 
that he should create a power antagonistic to the principles 
that He has ever been trying to incorporate into the lives 
and conduct of men. When we look back over the facts of 
history and trace down through the centuries the long chain 
of cause and effect running through all events of the past, it 
is beyond our comprehension to see how so many can be 
deluded by the traditions of the past, as to believe that nearly 
all mankind have been controlled and are to be forever an- 
noyed and influenced by the devil, not only all through this 
life, but to be made the companions of devils throughout 
eternity. How can anyone holding that God is ever con- 
scious of the needs of man, and is continually concerned in 
his welfare, so much so that he was willing to make the great 
sacrifice that He did to redeem the world, the greatest that 
finite mind is capable of grasping, in order that he may raise 
man to a higher standard of moral and intellectual attain- 
ments and then at the same time create a host of demons to 
operate in the world upon the lives and actions of men and 
cause them to commit all kinds of crimes and deeds of wrong. 
If there is a devil for every human being in the world, then 
there necessarily has to be a constant multiplication of evil 
spirits, or if but one devil does he do all this diabolical work 
throughout the world, among its millions of inhabitants? He 
would be equal to God himself in power if he does. He 
would have to be omniscient, and omnipresent, in all places 
at the same time, operating against the powers for good. If 
God has the power to destroy such an adversary, why does 
he permit him to exist to mar the order and the fine adjust- 



90 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

ment of things in this world, or is it better for man to have a 
devil to contend with that he may be able to decide which 
io serve, and be on a constant warfare against the attacks 
o* the evil one? Would man not have a struggle anyway 
against evil from the natural tendencies of his nature without 
the aid of a devil? 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 



Chapter V. 

Is Satan a Factor in the Affairs o 
This world? 

BUT HOW is there evil at all in the world presided 
over by so beneficent a being as God? Can he be 
conceived of, as having any limitation to his power? 
It is not so taught in the teaching of Jesus. He conceived 
of the Divine Father as Lord of Heaven and earth, and of 
the whole universe. How evil came into the world, he does 
not in any of his recorded words explain. He deals with 
evil as a fact ; he sees it all around, in the heart, and lives of 
man ; in the individual, and in the community, among the re- 
ligious as well as among the irreligious, and He makes it 
His business to fight it wherever He sees it. But He does 
not seem to have theorized about the origin of evil. In fact 
there is no trace of two supernatural beings contending for 
supremacy, taught in the Gospels. There is indeed a malign 
being who flits like a ghost over the evangelical pages. He 
is mentioned a few times in the later books of the Old Tes- 
tament, and during the period between the close of the He- 
brew canon, and the beginning of the Christian era, he seem* 
to have attained increasing definiteness of shape, and width 
of function in popular Jewish theology. His name is Satan. 
He is represented as working mischief in two ways: killing 
souls by tempting men to moral unfaithfulness, and by tak- 
ing baleful possession of men's bodies in connection with 
diseases which present to the eye the appearance of subjec- 
tion to a foreign power — such as insanity, epilepsy, etc. 



92 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

This conception appeals to the religious imagination, giving 
to evil the aspect of an awful mystery, and it makes it pos- 
sible to think of man as a victim, rather than as the sole or 
prime agent in sin. 

Some, and with good reason, too, are of the opinion that 
Satan was not more than a convenient pictorial thought for 
the mind of Jesus. That He used current ideas with a 
measure of freedom is evident from His identifying the 
Elijah that was expected to appear with John the Baptist. 
In any case there is nothing to show that He regarded the 
idea as offering an adequate explanation of the evil that is 
in man, and in the world. For He recognized the natural 
tendency to evil that was inborn in human nature, and that 
he had the freedom of choice between good and evil. So, 
as it is in the natural world of fact, so it is also in Christ's 
world of theory. He does not impose on facts, a theoretic 
conception with which they cannot be made to fill. His con- 
ditions are plain. He simply reads the world with enlight- 
ened eyes, and frames His ideas of God to correspond. He 
finds in the world national catastrophes like that of Israel, 
and He recognizes these as the work of God acting as a 
ruler through the eternal laws of the natural world. The 
calamity that befell Jerusalem was only the culmination of 
their own obstinacy, which only religious fanaticism can in- 
spire and they perished in the unequal struggle. 

Christ had tried to save His countrymen from their im- 
pending doom, by exposing the delusions and vices of their 
religious guides, and by emancipating their minds from the 
idolatry of legal tradition, and from the spell of spurious 
Messianic hope. If they had listened to Him, they would 
have been saved. Instead of clinging to the vain expecta- 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 93 

tion of a Christ, who would restore Israel to political inde- 
pendence, they would have become a regenerate people at 
peace with God, and safe under the yoke of Rome. Jesus 
saw it all. Not in the light that some moderns would have 
us believe; that God sent this calamity upon them. But 
this dark aspect of Providence that befell them, did not 
blind His mind to the paternal beneficence of God which 
he makes it His main business to proclaim. A loving God 
is His gospel. The Lord God was to Him above all a sun 
and shield, and He believed that the facts in history justified 
Him in so thinking. Christ's doctrine of Providence is ac- 
ceptable from every point of view. It satisfies the demands 
alike of heart, conscience, and reason. It satisfies by of- 
fering to our faith a God whose nature is paternal, and 
whose providential action has for its supreme characteristic 
benignancy. It satisfies the conscience by ignoring no dark 
facts in the world's history; by looking moral evil straight 
in the face; and by recognizing frankly the primitive action 
of men. 

It satisfies the reason by avoiding abstract antithesis be- 
tween providential action and natural law by viewing that 
action as imminent and constant, rather than transcendant 
and occasional, pervading the course of nature, and working 
through it rather than interrupting it by supernatural incur- 
sions. Its rationality is further revealed by unreserved ac- 
ceptance of growth and progress, as the law of the spiritual, 
not less than that of the natural world. In this respect, 
modern evolutionary philosophy, far from superseding the 
teaching of Christ, only tends to illustrate its wisdom, and 
helps to a better understanding of its meaning. 



94 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

Is Satan the cause of evil in the world? If man was 
made perfect, how did it come about that a morally perfect 
man was so easily tempted, and fell from his exalted position 
and was accursed of God, so soon after the creation, when 
all was pronounced good. Ought not a morally perfect be- 
ing to be temptation proof? Then, if, as is supposed, the 
good God was able to conduct the evolution of the human 
race, with entire success up to that point, in spite of all 
Satanic attempts at marring the great work of making a 
perfect being, why should he encounter such fatal frustra- 
tion after that consummation had been reached? 

Is this notion of a moral subject made perfect, and guar- 
anteed against falling into sin by divine power, not destruc- 
tive of morality? Why is it not preferable to exclude the ac- 
ceptance of the absolutely bad, unmitigatedly malignant 
devil ? One's whole soul rises in rebellion against this revolt- 
ing notion. Is it possible to believe that such a being, evil 
fiom the beginning, can exist? How could he ever come to 
be? If we admit that he does exist we can no more under- 
take to say how such a being as Satan came into existence, 
than we can account for the existence of the Deity Himself. 

There are but two alternatives, either the evil spirit, like 
the good spirit is unoriginated, eternal, or he owes his being, 
like all other creatures, to the good spirit. The former al- 
ternative amounts to this: That good and evil are both 
alike divine; a position which involves at once the cancell- 
ing of moral distinction, and the destruction of Deity. If 
good and evil be both alike divine, and possessed of super- 
natural power, then there is no ground for preferring good 
to evil, save personal liking. If there be two gods with equal 
rights though radically opposed to each other, then there is 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 95 

no God. Two rival gods, like two rival popes, destroy each 
other and leave the universe without a divine head. With 
the other alternative, Satan as the creation of God, we are in 
an equally hopeless predicament. What is gained by re- 
lieving God of responsibility for all evil in the world, if we 
end by making him responsible for the existence of the malign 
being by whom all the mischief has been wrought. Is not 
the presence in the universe of such an absolutely wicked 
spirit an infinitely greater evil than all the other evils put 
together? Better make God the creator of evil under miti- 
gated forms than the creator of a hideous monster who is an 
unmitigated evil, and through whose diabolical agency He 
becomes indirectly the cause of all the evil that has happened 
in the world. There is doubtless but one door by which 
the Deity may seem to escape responsibility for the badness 
of Satan and his work, if there is such a being, and that is by 
the hypothesis that Satan was created good and afterward 
lapsed into evil. But if God created man perfect and it was 
his desire to keep him free from evil, and he would have kept 
him from falling, if it had not been for Satan who wrought 
the mischief ; if Satan was once good, why did He not keep 
him from falling. If it is true he was an angel and cast 
down to earth on account of his transgression, how it is, 
if he could fall into evil in Heaven, without a tempter, why 
could not our first parents have fallen without being tempted 
by him? Was man more perfect than the angels? The 
fact is that every tribe and race of man in all parts of the 
world from the very earliest dawn of history and even prim- 
itive man have firmly believed in evil spirits and they have 
at all times attributed all the destroying agencies that have 
had their existence among them, to the malignant influences 
of evil spirits. 



9 6 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

The world for the savage is full of devils, but the so-called 
evils are evil only relatively to man's ignorance. 

The Jew conceived a devil as looking out upon the work 
of creation, watching his chance of doing mischief on a great 
scale and finding it at the point where, in the slow unfolding 
of life, love and selfishness first came into conflict. Not that 
it is supposed to be the time at which the Satanic monster 
began to exist, for his existence and his malign activity are 
dated as far back as the day dawn of creation or soon after. 
But his first serious stroke of business as a marrer of God's 
vvork consisted in altering the relative strength of selfishness 
and love, so as, against the Creator's intention, to secure for 
selfishness the preponderance. He conceived that the Satanic 
method generally is to bring about disorder, Satan is not a 
law maker, or a worker according to law, but a disturber of 
law. The Creator works by means of law, but his arch 
enemy works by the disturbance of law, by trying to effect 
failures in the established order of nature. 

The modern idea of a devil is a little different, while 
careful to place him beneath God, it invests him with very 
God-like qualities. He was in existence from the beginning 
cf the world, and from the beginning was on evil bent, seek- 
ing whom he might devour. He is everywhere at the same 
time, putting in his diabolical work of deceiving, seducing, 
and beguiling men and women into everything that is evil. 
He has a nature akin to that of God, possessed of spiritual 
power, and endowed with similar faculties, combining the 
intellect and energy of God with the malignity of a devil. 
He has godlike perception, enabling him to comprehend 
the intricacies of the Cosmic system, the possibilities latent 
in primordial matter, and the hidden nature of all physical 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 97 

forces such as that of gravitation. He can impose his will in 
the elementary particles of matter, lay down laws, fit one law 
for modifying or balancing another and disturb the ad- 
justments made by the Creator. While he cannot wreck 
Creation, his power is striving to unsettle the balance and 
seriously disturbing the divine adjustment of things. He has 
been engaged in this bad work during the thousands of years 
since the world began and we must suppose that the good 
spirit would gladly have put an end to his evil influence long 
ago, if it had been possible, the influence is that the wicked 
spirit is too potent to be readily subdued and overcome; 
that his power indeed approximates to that of the Supreme 
Being himself. 

The Supremacy of the Great First Cause must be guarded 
and in order to do that it must be held as an article of faith, 
in spite of all appearances to the contrary, that between the 
potency of the evil spirit, and that of the good Spirit is an 
infinity of difference. Satan could neither create a world 
nor prevent another from creating it; he could only mar a 
world already made, and though he be so strong that the 
Maker of the universe, however desirous, cannot destroy 
him and his influence, yet his doom is eventual defeat and 
destruction. The time will come in the far future when 
the benignant Creator shall reign with a sway absolutely un- 
disputed. 

THE JEWISH DEVIL AND THE MODERN DEVIL 

We now turn to the Jewish or Semitic conception of a 
personal devil, which may, as most writers think, have come 
into Jewish theology from Persia, after the captivity, and 
consider how far it offers a solution of the problem of evil. 



98 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

We note first with satisfaction that the Biblical Satan, has a 
much more restricted range of action than the Satan of 
modern times. The latter begins to meddle almost at crea- 
tion's dawn, and becomes specially active at the point where 
altruism first makes its appearance in the animal world; 
that is to say, ages before the evolution of life culminated 
in man. The Satan of Scripture on the other hand, becomes 
active, for the first time, in the human sphere, his one concern 
being to wreck the moral world whose possibility was pro- 
vided for by the advent of man. The writer of Genesis con- 
ceives in creation everything good, and no fault to be found 
in either the animate or inanimate world, and makes no allu- 
sion to Satan or Satanic activity as extending back of the 
history of creation. Where he came from, when Adam 
appeared on the scene, is not stated, but he appears as the 
enemy of moral good, as an unbeliever in it, and as a tempter 
to moral evil. In Genesis the conception of an external 
tempter, not something within, in the mythological guise of 
a serpent, is employed to make more easily comprehensible 
the origin of sin, the wrong doing by human beings absolutely 
free from transgression. In later scriptures, the same being 
now called Satan (he was called the tempter before), ap- 
pears in the same capacity, endeavoring to seduce good men, 
as David, Job, and Jesus, to do evil actions contrary to their 
character. Whether he appeared to them in a visible form 
or internally is not stated. 

Such is the function of Satan in the Bible. Putting aside 
all doubts in regard to the reality of such a being we may 
ask, does the idea of a superhuman tempter really solve the 
problem as to the origin of evil in the first man, or in any man. 
"Who can understand his errors?" asks the Psalmist. Some- 
times it is not easy, and in such case we may employ the 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 99 

assistance of a supernatural tempter as a way of expressing 
the difficulty which impresses the imagination while it fails 
to satisfy the reason. 

This is all that it does, even in the case of Adam. Who we 
naturally inquire, can understand his error? But do we un- 
derstand it even with the aid of the tempting serpent, on any 
view of the primitive state. If it was a state of moral per- 
fection in the strict sense, ought not the first man to have been 
temptation proof, especially against such rudimentary forms 
of temptation as are mentioned in the story. If it was only 
a state of childish innocence, does not the introduction of 
supernatural agency invest with an aspect of mystery what is 
in itself a comparatively simple matter, shortcomings of an 
utterly inexperienced person. 

The same remark applies to the case of David. In the 
pages of the Chronicles David appears as a saint, but his 
moral short-comings recorded in the earlier record (in the 
second book of Samuel) are left out of the account. Satan 
is represented as tempting him to number the people, as if 
to make conceivable how so good a man could do an action 
displeasing to God. The poor old devil gets all the blame 
for everything, but it is not difficult to imagine how even a 
godly king might be betrayed into a transaction of the kind 
specified by very ordinary motives. In the case of saints 
generally it may be remarked that their moral lapses would 
not appear so mysterious as they are sometimes thought to 
be, if the whole truth as to their spiritual state were known. 
The habit of referring these deviations from rectitude as oth- 
erwise incomprehensible events, to Satanic temptation, is not 
free from danger. It tends to self deception, and to the cov- 
ering over of some hidden evil in the heart which needs look- 



100 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

ing after. Such abuses of the Biblical idea of a supernatural 
tempter are carefully to be guarded against, but the mischief 
they work is a trifle compared with the havoc produced by 
ascribing to Satanic agency the whole moral evil of mankind., 
That means, that, but for Satanic interference, the page of 
human history would have been a stainless record of the 
lives of perfect men, kept from falling by the gracious power 
of God. Such a view carries two fatal consequences. It 
convicts God of inability, and it relieves man of all respon- 
sibility. The one mighty being and the one sinner in the 
world, is Satan. The story of our race is dark enough, but 
it is not so dark as that. It is the story of a race of free moral 
agents who are not the puppets of either Deity or devil. The 
sin of man is not a witness to a frustrated God, but to a God 
who would rather have sin in the world than have a world 
without sin, because tenanted by beings physically incapaci- 
tated to commit it. The transgression of a free responsible 
being is in God's sight of more value than the involuntary 
rectitude of beings who are forcibly protected from going 
wrong. If there is to be goodness in the world, it must be the 
personal achievement of the good. Not, indeed, of the 
good unaided. 

The Divine Being is more than looker on. He co-oper- 
ates in every way consistent with due respect for our moral 
personality. Our Redeemer from everlasting evil is what 
God has been from the first, and throughout the entire his- 
tory of man. A preventer of evil He cannot be, simply be- 
cause He values morality. But a Redeemer He truly is, and 
His work as such cannot be frustrated by any number of 
Satans, ancient or modern. If Satan exists, it must be be- 
cause it is always possible for a moral subject to make a 
perverted use of his endowments. If such a perverted be- 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 101 

mg tempts man, his malign influence is simply a part of the 
untoward environment amid which they have to wrestle with 
evil. He can do no more than make a subtle use of the evil 
elements in our own nature, with which alone we need con- 
cern ourselves. Let us watch our own hearts and Satan will 
never have a chance. Let us throw off the imaginary idea 
cf an omnipresent devil, and guide our way with good hope, 
and full confidence that God is with us, and that he is strong- 
er than all powers, visible or invisible, that may be arrayed 
against us. 

EVIL AS SEEN BY THE PROPHETS 

But how stand the facts as seen by the writers both of the 
Old Testament and all along down through the ages? Is 
the order of the world even when at its best, as moral as the 
prophetic theory requires? Is there not some great ma- 
lignant power walking in opposition to the divine will? 
Are there not many things which seem to show that the lot of 
men is merely a matter of good or evil, and that events hap- 
pen either in accordance with a purely physical fate, or by 
an utterly incalculable, inexplicable, accident. And, if the 
order of the world be so non-moral in appearance, what 
guarantee* is there that the universe is not presided over by 
a non-moral deity or a Satan? The conditions which raise 
such anxious questions did not escape the observation of the 
earlier prophets. These seeming appearances did not 
originate with the apostles, neither are they mere exceptional 
peculiarities of modern experience. They are as old as the 
world and have always attracted the notice of every person 
of ordinary discernment among all the nations of earth, not 
to speak of men of rare moral insight like the prophets. Be- 
cause they intensely desired to see that the moral order 



102 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

should be perfect, that the prophets would be keenly sensi- 
tive to everything that seemed to come in opposition to their 
efforts for good, the idea of some supernatural evil spirit 
working in direct opposition to the divine will, and tempting 
men to forsake God and go into all kinds of sin and evil, 
seemed to the Jewish mind to be a feasible explanation, and 
when once the problem had fairly announced itself, and be- 
come a subject of reflection, it would create a sense of ever 
deepening perplexity, leaving the prophetic mind no rest till 
it had found some clue to the mystery. 

Then after the return of the captive Jews from Babylon, 
or soon after, appeared for the first time the story of the fall 
of man, of the serpent and the origin of sin which they 
gleaned from Persian mythology. Therefore, before the ac- 
quisition of this dogma, the faith of the earlier prophet might 
be comparatively confident and cheerful, while that of his 
brother, belonging to a later generation might be over- 
shadowed with doubt and for the seer of a still later time, 
the darkness might pass into the dawn of a new light upon 
the very appearance which had brought on the eclipse of 
faith. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 103 



Chapter VI 
Demons and Evil Spirits 

AS FAR as we can trace the history of primitive man 
in the remote past, among all the different races that 
we have any knowledge of, they are imbued with 
the idea that the whole world is filled with evil spirits, and 
those evil spirits have more or less to do with the actions of 
men, and they were constantly in dread that they might do 
something that would offend one of these evil spirits or 
gods. Having such a conception, it was natural for them to 
resort to some means to appease their wrath. In later times 
when we pass beyond this primitive age, we find instead of 
using the term evil spirit, the word demon came into use, 
which means "a malignant being," whose purpose in the 
world was to instigate evil of all kinds. The demon figure 
of the Old Testament, which is clearly defined and which 
maintained itself for a long time in the national thought, is 
called in Leviticus 16, "Azazel." He seems to appear in 
the solemn rites of the day of atonement as a wilderness 
power, to whom belonged the domain of evil. The world, 
in their conception, was divided between God and Azazel or 
Satan, as the two are regarded as identical. Of the early 
history of Azazel we know nothing. He only appears in 
some of the documents before the exile, and is even men- 
tioned elsewhere in the Old Testament. He appears in the 
book of Enoch where he is the leader of the evil spirits, and 
is, according to this book, condemned to imprisonment 
to the day of judgment, when he is to be cast into a lake of 



104 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

fire. He certainly plays the part of Satan, and in all suc- 
ceeding Jewish literature, Satan is the evil one and Azazel 
vanishes from sight. 

The similarity between the Jewish Azazel and the Per- 
sian Ahriman, the ancient name of demon, is obvious and 
there is no doubt but that the thought came from there and 
was put into the Levitical ritual. Not only were these demon 
forms associated with evil spirits, but we find a more ad- 
vanced conception in the host of spirits who are represented 
as forming God's heavenly court. The fullest and most 
striking description of this court is given in the story of 
Ahab, ( 1 Kings 22 : 1 9) . "I saw God sitting on his throne 
and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand 
and on his left, and God said, 'Who will entice Ahab that 
he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead?' And one said one 
thing and another another thing, and there came forward a 
spirit and stood before God and said, 'I will entice him/ and 
God said 'How?' and he said 'I will go and will be a living 
spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' And He said, 'Thou 
shalt entice him,' and so he went forth." Here we have ap- 
parently a number of spirits without distinction and author- 
ity, and the whole body forms a sort of council whose ad- 
vice on this important occasion is asked by God. There is 
no question of right or wrong. The spirit of falsehood is the 
agent of God acting by his directions and assured of his 
support. Many examples of this kind are found in Hebrew 
literature, where evil spirits are sent out by God to accom- 
plish his purposes. One is in the case of Job, where God 
sent an evil spirit to try his faith. The oldest angelic repre- 
sentation in the Old Testament seems to be that of a being 
who is apparently charged with the whole divine authority 
and acts as if he were an independent divinity. Such is the 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 105 

thought of the being who appears to Hagar, Genesis 16:7 . 
This figure is perhaps a real survival of an ancient deity. 
It is thus that an independent deity, transformed in a mono- 
theistic faith into a messenger of the supreme God, would 
act, and who afterward became one of God's messengers, 
called an angel. From these passages it may be concluded 
that this conception of angels carrying messages from God 
to man, got its hold on Jewish thought, and retained it down 
to a comparatively late period. 

It must be remembered that the Jews did not take such 
ideas from books, but they came into possession of these 
ideas from popular beliefs, as these beliefs that we get from 
the Persian sacred books do not exactly correspond with the 
theological standards of religious beliefs that have come 
down to Christian peoples. It is quite conceivable that the 
Persian popular doctrine of guardian spirits was fuller than 
that of the books, or we may suppose that the idea of angels 
as guardians of particular nations originated among the Jews 
under Persian influence. Abundant opportunity for borrow- 
ing such conceptions was afforded by the long residence of 
the exiles in Babylon after it became a Persian province. 
Ezekiel and his successors showed themselves quite ready 
to adopt these ideas and there is no reason why his associ- 
ates should not have been willing to receive suggestions from 
the Persians. Therefore, a general influence throughout 
the Jewish people is not at all improbable. 

The position of angels in the New Testament is in general 
the same as in the Old Testament but somewhat different in 
some books. They are immortal, and their special ordinary 
function is to minister to God's people. Particularly in 
times of doubt or distress, and it is thought to be not unnat- 



106 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

ural that they should also speak to men. They conduct the 
souls of the righteous to Paradise; they inflict disease on 
wicked men; they form a sort of heavenly society, before 
which Christ will acknowledge his servants, in order that 
they may be admitted to the privileges of His blessed com- 
panionship ; they are to be the attendants of the Son of Man 
when he shall come to judge the world; they will remove 
the wicked and will turn them over to the devil and his 
angels. Satan, however, can assume the form of an angel 
of light, for the purpose of deceiving men, just as God's min- 
isters, false teachers of religion, present themselves as 
apostles of Christ. (2 Corinthians 9:14). 

As has been alluded to before, no one figure before the 
exile stands out prominently among the many spirits who do 
the bidding of God. He is absolutely supreme, and His mes- 
sengers do whatever good or bad offices He assigns them, 
but when the Jews returned from Babylon a new spiritual 
being appears in the affairs of Israel called Satan, whose 
function it was to oppose the welfare of the chosen people. 
The prophet Zechariah pictures the high priest Joshua, the 
representative of the nation, as pleading his people's cause 
before the angel of the Lord. He is opposed by this Satan, 
whose object is to prevent the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Then 
Satan is rebuked and Joshua is promised if he will faithfully 
keep God's commands, the nation shall be established. The 
figure of the great spiritual adversary of the nation seems 
here to be in the act of taking shape. He is the embodi- 
ment of all Israel's difficulties and enemies. Israelitish 
thought constantly grappling with the problem of the suffer- 
ing of God's people had apparently reached the conviction 
that the opposition to the national well-being must come 
from a spirit hostile to God. This conception is a great 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 107 

advance over the idea entertained before the exile of the 
constitution of the spirit world and we can only suppose 
that the conditions of Jewish life in Babylon had been in- 
strumental in producing this change. 

In the book of Job we may recognize further progress in 
the changed view of Satanic power. With the prophet his 
relations are with Israel, in Job with humanity. He travels 
up and down the earth with no good intent; he discusses 
Job's character; and he doubts his sincerity; and induces 
God to subject his servant to severest tests simply to try his 
integrity; He is a malignant and powerful being, but he is 
not detached from the person and service of God; on the 
contrary he is a member of the divine court; presents him- 
self among the sons of God before the divine throne; is 
called on by God to make reports of his doings ; and receives 
from him the commission to test the character of Job. Such 
also is probably his position in Zechariah. The representa- 
tion in Job is an imaginative one ; Satan appears only in the 
court of Heaven in the dwelling place of God, as his min- 
ister. The progress involved in this statement may be seen 
by a comparison of 2 Samuel, 24th chapter, where in the 
description of the same incident it is God who incites the 
king to the act of disobedience. Between the two state- 
ments an interval of about 200 years had passed in which 
the feeling had grown up that instigation to evil could not 
properly be referred to God. An evil spirit becomes the 
agent of temptation to sin. The advance in this representa- 
tion consists, as is intimated above, in the complete intro- 
duction of Satan. In Zechariah he is the adversary of the 
nation ; in Job his business is that of a slanderer of righteous 
men. In Corinthians, while the evil in question is a casual 



108 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

one, it may probably be inferred that he is regarded as a 
general instigator to evil, entering into the conduct of man's 
life. 

After 1 Chronicles, chapter 21, Satan is mentioned no 
more in the Old Testament, and rarely in the extra Biblical 
Books. The two works in which he appears treat him in 
very different ways. The first attempt at a spiritual inter- 
pretation of the serpent of Genesis, chapter 3, occurs in the 
Wisdom of Solomon, 2:24. The narrative in Genesis 
recognizes in the tempter of Eve only an animal form 
endowed with intelligence and speech. This account ap- 
parently the survival and recognition of an old Semitic myth, 
stands isolated in Genesis, and is mentioned nowhere else in 
the Old Testament. But after the fifth century before 
Christ, when the narrative probably assumed its present 
shape, the feeling would naturally arise in some circles that 
so tremendous an event as the introduction of sin into the 
world could not be referred to the agency of a beast. The 
serpent form would come to be regarded as the vehicle 
chosen by the great spiritual adversary to vent on the first 
man the hate, which according to the earlier books, inspired 
his attempt on Israel and Job. 

The name given in the Book of Wisdom to this wicked 
spirit is Diabolos, which is the Greek translation of the He- 
brew name, Satan. It can hardly be doubted that in the 
mind of the writer this being was identical with the Satan of 
the Jewish books. "Through envy of the devil," so the 
passage runs, that is envy of man's immortality, death came 
into the world. Here the activity of the adversary assumes 
the largest proportions. He has succeeded in inflicting the 
greatest evil on the human race. The book of Enoch makes 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 109 

Satan the head and ruler of evil spirits and places under him 
a number of Satans who do his bidding in exciting mankind 
to deeds of wrong. 

That the progress of the idea of Satan as tempter was 
slow seems probable, not only from the infrequency with 
which he is introduced, but also from the fact that neither 
Enoch nor Josephus connects him with the serpent of Gen- 
esis. Possibly this identification began in Egypt, and only 
gradually found its way into Palestine. The time, however, 
is insufficient for determining to what extent this view was 
held by Palestinal Jews before the beginning of our era, 
but it is certain that Satan appears as a well developed figure 
in the earliest periods of the New Testament, and we may 
hence conclude that in the preceding two centuries he had 
formed a distinct part of the Jewish belief. At the same 
time, as the development of the conception of a great 
spiritual adversary, there grew up a history of fallen angels, 
the starting point of which Was the account found in 
Genesis, sixth chapter. The origin and date of this pass- 
age are doubtful. The sons of God are, in general, angels, 
this expression never meaning anything else in the Old Tes- 
tament, or more exactly, they are improvements of the class 
of gods, being the Israelitish representatives of the old di- 
vinities. Inter-marriages between deities and human beings 
are abundant in all mythology, such alliances surviving in a 
monotheistic system would naturally take the shape of the 
Genesis story. This may be the remnant of the mythical 
narrative brought by the Hebrews from Mesopotamia, or it 
may have come to the Jews from the Babylonians, during 
the exile, or from the Assyrians before the exile. The in- 
cident is not elsewhere mentioned in the Old Testament, and 
had no perceptible influence on the Jewish thought of the 



110 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

Old Testament time. The story appears to be introduced 
in Genesis, not to account for the increasing wickedness of 
man and thus as a partial explanation of the flood, but to 
set forth the origin of the ancient heroes, the incident being 
narrated with the utmost impersonality simply as an his- 
torical fact. 

The book of Enoch, which takes this material and ex- 
pands it at great length, adopts an altogether different tone. 
It denounces the conduct of the angels as the height of im- 
piety, gives the names of their leaders, and ascribes to 
them the beginning of all the wickedness of the world. They 
are said to have taught man the science of war, the art of 
writing, and other hateful things. The leaders are Azazel 
and Semyaza, and they are said to be bound hand and foot, 
and imprisoned till the day of judgment, when they are to be 
cast into the fire. This narrative is an attempt at a philo- 
sophical hint of civilization, following and expanding the 
ideas given in Genesis in the first chapter. It undertakes 
to give the beginning of the arts of life which it thinks it 
necessary to refer to a supernatural origin and curiously 
enough to anti-godly agencies. 

The whole angelic scheme seems not to have made any 
great impression on the Jewish mind. Part of the descrip- 
tion in Enoch is adopted in the New Testament Apocalypse. 
The fate of the angels who came down from heaven is 
briefly summed up in Jude 6; and there is perhaps an allu- 
sion in Luke 10 to the same occurrence, in the statement 
that Satan fell like lightning from heaven, but the body of 
the New Testament thought ignores this episode. In the 
Old Testament neither the fall nor the creation is men- 
tioned. Their existence is simply assumed, where it is said 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 111 

that at the creation of the world, "The morning stars sang 
together and all the sons of God shouted for joy." This 
reticence respecting the creation is easily understood if we 
consider the angels to be a survival and development of the 
old deities, whose participation in the work of the creation 
of the world is involved in the words, "Let us make man," 
of Genesis 1 :26. The Hebrews, receiving and accepting 
these beings as existing with God, might naturally not think 
of them as included in the created world. It was the old 
Babylonian method (found on the Babylonian tablets of 
the creation story) which derived all the gods from two 
primitive water beings, but there is no clear trace of this 
in the Old Testament. Those who insist on seeing the cre- 
ation of angels in the Biblical story of creation, either prefer 
to insert it between the first and second verses of the first 
chapter of Genesis, and find in the angelic apostasy, and re- 
bellion the explanation of the chaos which they hold to 
have supervened on God's first good creation, or they hold 
it to be included in Genesis 2:1, where "the host of them" 
refers to the physical creation. 

The Satan of the New Testament is substantially iden- 
tical with the pre-Christian figure, only more highly elabor- 
ated in accordance with the characteristic moral, and spirit- 
ual idea, and intensity of Christianity. He is the chief of 
the kingdom of evil spirits, and is possessed with power to 
inflict disease on the bodies of man, to tempt them to sin, and 
he is the opponent of truth. No attempt is made to show 
how his enormous power and wicked activity are to be 
brought into harmony with the divine power and goodness. 
He is no mere symbol of the wicked elements of life, he is 
an objective being, acting apparently without limitations of 
time and space. In some cases his power appears to be 



112 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

represented as equal to that of God. As God chooses 
those who are to believe in salvation it is Satan who blinds 
the minds of the unbelieving that the light of the Gospel of 
the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not 
dawn on them. But on the other hand, the New Testa- 
ment has a perfectly distinct conviction of the absolute su- 
premity of God. He is the sole fountain of power in the 
universe; at the end the kingdom is to be His and Satan is 
to be tormented forever. He represents the evil of the 
world, and is to endure until evil shall be blotted out by the 
perfection of the righteous and the imprisonment of the 
wicked. There is no hint of a possible change in Satan's 
moral character. The New Testament leaves him at the be- 
ginning of a new dispensation as the embodiment of evil 
to abide forever, but in chains and darkness, shorn of his 
power, no longer able to disturb the moral order of the 
universe. Its solution of the power of evil is practical, not 
logical or philosophical. While we may thus trace the line 
of progress of the influence of Satan, it is less easy to ac- 
count for its origin. It appears certainly in Zechariah and 
Job, apparently without preparation. 

The history of the class of evil intelligences called spirits 
is no less remarkable, than that of Satan and his angels. It 
culminates in the idea of demoniacal possessions, a concep- 
tion which has its roots in the Old Testament, but suddenly 
assumes enormous proportions in the first centuries of Chris- 
tianity. According to the old Israelitish belief, as we have 
seen, all mental affections were ascribed to the agency of 
spirits sent from God; and these remained throughout the 
Old Testament, morally undefined, they work good and evil 
alike. It is in the Book of Tobit that we find the first men- 
tion of a definite relation between the evil spirit and a human 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 113 

being. In Enoch the fallen angels appear in human shape, 
and affect man rather by ordinary human intercourse than 
by direct influence on the soul. There is quite a distinct 
difference advanced along the line of ethical thought by the 
introduction of foreign ideas. The Greek idea is visible in 
the passage of Josephus 7:6-3, which assumes that sickness 
is produced by demons who are no other than the spirits of 
the wicked. We have no further details on this point in 
Jewish literature earlier than the New Testament; but that 
the belief in demoniac influence continued among the Jews 
is evident from the Talmud, which makes abundant men- 
tion of evil spirits, and magical processes by expanding the 
Old Testament spiritual material. The Jews had in the 
meantime become members of the Roman Empire, in which 
the belief in magic and exorcism was general. 

There was, about the beginning of our era, a sort of re- 
vival of the primeval faith. The old machinery of gods 
had almost disappeared in cultivated circles. Men ridiculed 
the Olympian deities and even the patron gods of the Roman 
state, and took refuge in those mysterious powers which 
were credible, because they were at once visible and un- 
intelligible, which satisfied the demand for the wonderful 
without offending the science and philosophy of the day. 

Whether this foreign belief affected the Jews cannot be 
determined, it seems probable that from so widespread an 
opinion, some influence made itself felt in Palestine. The 
Palestine belief was in its general thought old Israelitish, 
but it had received the important modification of the dif- 
ferences between the spirits into good and bad. The good 
however, seemed partly to have been merged into the body 
of the good angels as the minister of God's beneficent deal- 



114 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

ings with men, and partly to have been absolved in the 
divine spirit, which came more and more to be regarded as 
the source of morally good spiritual influence on the soul. 
We read of no organization of good spirits, in the New Tes- 
tament, the normally sound life is attributed to the spirit of 
God, while the explanation of its diseases is held to lie in 
the agency of bad powers. 

The impression of insanity as a demoniacal possession 
was not a new one. It is found in the Old Testament where 
the ecstacies of prophets, seers, and priests were sometimes 
akin to madness. Such a frightful distortion of the human 
soul was not unnaturally looked upon as the result of super- 
natural influence. The unhappy victims of possession were 
driven out from among men and forced to dwell in tombs 
and desolate places. It was natural that Jesus in his mis- 
sion of mercy should meet these unfortunates and try to 
alleviate their misery and restore them to their right minds. 
Doubtless many of them needed only sympathy and care, 
and few of them were without a trace of humanity which 
might be successfully appealed to. There is no account 
given of the origin of demoniac influence either in the New 
or Old Testament. They seem to belong to the kingdom 
of Satan and beyond this nothing is said. The belief in 
demoniac possession long remained in the Christian world, 
passing after a while into the theory of witchcraft, then 
slowly disappearing altogether. The established belief in 
the orderly processes of nature makes it impossible to enter- 
tain such conceptions in the present day. The Christian 
world no longer holds to it as an existing appearance. It 
was the product of an unscientific age, a part of the general 
attempt to construct a system of intermediate facts between 
God and man, and to disjoin the realm of evil from the 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 115 

immediate divine activity. This latter purpose it really did 
not accomplish, since in both the Old and New Testaments, 
God permits the activity of the wicked spirits. But the re- 
ligious thought of the Biblical times found in this scheme a 
satisfactory solution of the problem of evil, confronting the 
fact of present mal-arrangement with the hope of future re- 
generation. The New Testament thus presents the final shap- 
ing of the old belief of a spiritual world into the form of the 
material world. The ancient spirits are, in part, transformed 
into wicked demons which, permitted by God for a time, 
are eventually to be brought to naught. In the general his- 
tory of religious thought, they may be looked upon as a 
temporary embodiment of that evil which in the Christian 
conception is finally to succumb to the higher moral power 
which belongs to the essential constitution of things. 



116 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 



Chapter VII 
Superstitions 

THE Old Testament contains many noble ideas, and 
great truths. Indeed it is a most remarkable collec- 
tion of religious books and undoubtedly there is none 
more venerable in the literature of the world, yet there are 
tares among the wheat and many lamentable errors were 
made by some of the leaders of the old Israelites which they 
regarded as essential parts of their religion. The writers of 
the Bible not only made God responsible for, and accessory 
to the crimes which their own people committed, but they 
cherished also the same superstitions that were commonly in 
vogue among savages. 

Thus the custom of burying people alive under 
foundation stones is mentioned as having been sanctioned 
by the God of Israel. When Jericho was destroyed at the 
special command of God, all its inhabitants were slain, both 
men, women and children, and all the animals. The Jews 
thought it was God's will when they entered the land of 
Canaan to completely exterminate the races that inhabited 
that country, and when they destroyed their cities, they said 
the Lord would put a curse upon the man that would at- 
tempt to rebuild the cities, especially Jericho, but still the 
city was rebuilt. 

The terrible witch persecutions which in the middle ages 
harassed Christianity have their root in some passages of 
the Old Testament. The laws of Exodus provided capital 
punishment for witchcraft, and the same command is re- 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 117 

peated in Leviticus, where we read, "The soul that turneth 
after such that have familiar spirits and after wizards, I will 
even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from 
among his people. A man, also, or a woman that has a 
familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to 
death. They shall stone them with stones ; their blood shall 
be upon them." Leviticus 20:27. Saul who had done his 
best to exterminate sooth-sayers, when in greatest anxiety 
concerning what he should do in the national affairs, called 
on the witch of Endor. Apparently the rise of a purer re- 
ligion was slow and the habits of a savage age continued 
for many centuries. The vestiges of devil worship with 
several of its more hideous rites, and even human sacrifices 
continued to exist even when a more radiant light began to 
shine in the world. One of the religious practices which 
Israel found in this land of Canaan at the time of their occu- 
pation was child sacrifice. Of the prevalence of child sac- 
rifice among the Canaanites at a later period we have abun- 
dant evidence in the prophets, and the book of Kings. So 
prevalent and well-established was the practice that Israel 
was in constant danger, according to these sources, of adopt- 
ing into its own religion, this, to us, peculiarly horrid and of- 
fensive practice. We are told that at various times the 
practice was common at Jerusalem, and the valley of Ga- 
hanna; also, particularly connected with the sacrifice of in- 
fants to the god of the Canaanites. 

The idea of the sacrifice of the fruit of the body for the 
sm of the soul is one of the wide-spread, almost funda- 
mental, ideas of fairly primitive man, continuing often in 
a more refined shape in a higher grade of civilization. So 
side by side, with high and lofty cults in India have lingered 
on, even after the English had subdued the country, those 



118 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

barbarous and cruel cults which call for sacrifice of children 
or even of adults. But it was especially in the Canaanitish 
and Assyrian regions that this thought of appeasing an angry 
Deity by the sacrifice of human beings seems to have be- 
come the prevailing doctrine. This doctrine has left its im- 
pression upon Hebrew law in all its stages, so underlying 
the laws regulating animal sacrifice there is the conception 
of the consecration of the first-born to God. In the Hebrew 
law, however, it was not actively the first born child or 
animal which was of necessity offered to God; but where 
that was not the case it had to be an animal without spot or 
blemish, but in after years, instead of offering the first-born 
of man as a sacrifice, they substituted instead a sheep or a 
goat. This slaughter was always made as a sacrifice, a 
consecration, or devotion to God, as they thought the very 
best and choicest belonged to Him, and it was His right to 
demand it. One of the most striking evidences of the wide- 
spread convictions among the Israelites of the efficacy of the 
sacrifice of the first born son, whether infant or grown, is af- 
forded by the story of the sacrifice of the son of the king of 
Moab in the third chapter of the second book of Kings. 
Each town or nation believed in the assistance of its own 
special God to whom it stood in a peculiar relation. At 
times it became necessary to strengthen the hands of that 
God, against the gods of hostile nations who seemed in some 
way to have been turned away or diverted. It was the wrath 
of the divine powers which brought disaster in battle, plague, 
pestilence, and in general, any misfortune which befell man. 

Such calamities were considered to be due to the wrath of 
the God of the town or nation itself. He might be offended 
because he had not received that which was his due. We 
have an example of this in the days of Jehoram, when the 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 119 

King of Judah, also a subject ally of Israel, and Edom, in 
its turn a subject ally of Judah's, went to war against Moab 
which, under its king, had revolted and cast off the yoke of 
Israel. The King of Israel, with his allies, the kings of 
Judah, and Edom, marched into Moab to take vengeance. 
The allies devastated the country and shut up the king of 
Moab in his stronghold, so the king of Moab was very sore 
cppressed. As a last resort, to appease his Deity or to 
strengthen his hands against the gods of his adversaries, in 
sight of his enemies, he sacrificed on the wall of the city his 
son. The Israelites, Jews, and Edomites, who beheld the 
sacrifice were filled with terror, knowing the meaning and 
the power of this sacrifice and believing that it would so 
arouse and strengthen the god of Moab that he would be- 
come almost, if not quite, irresistible, accordingly the allied 
kings were compelled to abandon the siege and withdraw 
without their purpose being accomplished. The meaning 
of the sacrifice of the first-born as they understood it is, of 
course, clear, and it is a meaning which appeals to people 
even of this day. God demands the best which man has, 
that which is most precious to him, if possible even more 
precious to him than himself. Man must appease God by 
giving Him the very best he has and the very best is the 
fruit of his body, and chief and highest of that fruit is the 
first-born son. 

Those who doubt the religious import of science need only 
consider what science has done for mankind by abolishing 
these heathen practices of sacrificing something to appease 
the wrath of God, and by the radical abolition of witch 
persecution, and they will be convinced that science is not 
religiously indifferent, but that it is the most powerful factor 
in the purification of the religions of mankind. The world 



120 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

conception of our industrial and social life, of international 
intercourse, and all serious movements on the lines of human 
progress, has even now to a great extent, practically be- 
come the religion of science, although the fact is not as yet 
definitely and openly acknowledged, and any sectarian 
faith that endeavors to set forth its claim of recognition, does 
it, and can do it, only on the ground that it is in accord with 
scientific truth. 

Fear 

Fear has had a great deal to do with the different re- 
ligious ceremonies of the world, which can be accounted for 
only from their dense ignorance of the laws by which all 
things in this universe are controlled, and their erroneous 
conception of God has confused the ignorant and enabled 
their priests and leaders to mislead men and cause them to 
accept their teaching through fear. It is doubtful if there 
has ever lived among all the different races of men since the 
beginning, a human being who has been absolutely devoid 
of fear. Fear then may be called a natural attribute of man, 
but they differ from each other, as to the amount of their 
fear, and it is this which separates them into two distinct 
classes, the courageous and the timid. 

Nature has made the same difference among all animals, 
as she has made among men. These resemblances have a 
deeper meaning than we are accustomed to give them. They 
are the same qualities, determined by the same kind of blood 
and nerves, evidence of functions, structures, and instincts, 
which have been evolved in the hard struggle for existence-,, 
and have been transmitted to us from the early beginnings 
of the race. Fear is the oldest, and most deeply rooted of 
human emotions, and like everything else which exists, it has 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 121 

or had a sufficiently good reason for its existence. Among 
the lower animals, and in the early history of man when the 
law was kill or be killed, its function was to avoid or escape 
danger and preserve life, and in doing this it also made for 
greater improvement in skill, and alertness in the use of the 
organs and senses, and all the mental powers. It was thus 
a great factor in the process of evolution. 

Fear is the father of all religions according to some of the 
best authorities, both ancient and modern. It is referred to 
in the Old and New Testaments more frequently than any 
other emotion. And certainly the role it has played in re- 
ligion is second to no other. It created Hell, the devil and 
his host of malignant demons, it was cause of all the var- 
ious devices for human suffering that were ever invented, 
and which have caused the many thousands of human sacri- 
fices to propitiate the angry deities, and is even now one of 
the quickest and surest agents for converting sinners, as wit- 
ness the results of all old fashioned revival meetings, in 
which hell and its torments are pictured in colors, and with 
an imagination that would do credit to a Milton or a Dante. 

Science is more indebted to fear than is generally realized. 
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge," said 
Solomon, and many of our strivings after wisdom are for the 
purpose of overcoming our fears, or of making ourselves 
masters, instead of slaves of our environments, of conquering 
or at least understanding the forces of nature, so that we need 
no longer fear them, and as a matter of fact, many of the 
things now best known are the things that were once most 
feared, so that we need have no hesitancy in saying that fear 
has been a great incentive to knowledge and science, religion 
and morality. 



122 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 



Chapter VIII 
The Origin of the Fall Story 

WE READ in the book of Genesis that God made 
man absolutely perfect, and that man would have 
continued such had not Satan seduced him into 
evil. And he was made in the image of God and placed 
in the Garden of Eden, and the World was to be his. That 
World, as pictured out by most theologians of the past, was 
to be an ideal World, in which all sin and evil were to be 
forever eliminated. A World that might be described as a 
paradise never lost, and therefore not needing to be regained. 
A World in which pain was to be practically unknown, the 
wolf dwelling with the lamb, and the leopard lying down 
with the kid. Man, a perfect creature in a perfect environ-, 
ment, thinking always right thoughts, on questions of good 
and evil, showing no desire to do wrong. Even primitive 
man utterly free from savagery, and innocent of hunting 
and warring propensities; development possible and ever 
free from sin, and deriving his moral stimulus, not from pain 
and sorrow, but from pleasure and joy. 

In that happy harmless World, death would not be un- 
known, but it would come merely as sleep after a long day's 
work, or like the fading of flowers, the dropping of fruit in the 
late autumn, or the dying out of the light of day to the 
dreamy music of the birds and the babbling of the brooks. 
It would be a World of perfect health, and there is abun- 
dant reason to believe it would be as easy to be born, as it is 
to die. It would be such a delightful World, indeed, that 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 123 

merely to live in it for, say 100 years, would satisfy all 
legitimate cravings for existence, and a hereafter would not 
be felt to be necessary. 

Such is the dreamer's ideal World as it might have been, 
had it not been for the existence of that being whose spirit 
i? absolutely antagonistic to that of the Creator. It might 
have been a very good World so far as sentiment and hap- 
piness is concerned, but is it in any sense a moral World? 
Is it possible to know right from wrong without good and 
evil being placed side by side. Does it not seem that evil 
in its own way, at least, was a means to good, as a necessary 
stimulus to a heroic struggle, without which, life would lack 
moral interest? 

Earth is the scene of struggle, and it is the struggle with 
evil that gives significance to life. The smooth life of effort- 
less virtue and uncheckered joy, no change, no hope, no 
fear, no better and no worse, would be an utter weariness, 
from which one would be glad to escape into a world where 
all these things were familiar facts of experience. May one 
not venture to say that the whole universe, full though it be 
of wrong, is preferable to the imaginary universe from which 
wrong is excluded, by the divine spirit. Compulsory holi- 
ness is not holiness, it is simply the mechanical service of a 
tool. 

How did the story of the fall of Adam through the in- 
trigues of the devil, come to be so universally accepted by all 
Christians throughout the world? 

The starting point for the history of the Christian doc- 
trine of the fall, and origin of sin, is undoubtedly the nar- 
rative contained in the third chapter of the Book of Genesis. 



124 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

Paul's teaching as to the relation of sin and death to Adam's 
transgression, is but one among various interpretations given 
to this story, and this doctrine of his was very slowly ar- 
rived at, after many centuries of interpretation and reflec- 
tion. St. Augustine more fully and definitely defined the 
doctrine, but his was only a developed form of the interpre- 
tation of Paul, which was arrived at after further centuries 
of speculation. The Apostle and Augustine both treated 
this account as a historical fact, and upon that source, laid 
the foundation of their views with regard to the origin of sin. 
But this old story as we have it in the Bible, has a previous 
history of development in Jewish thought, much greater in 
duration, from that which was afterward reached by Paul, 
from the Bible story, as a starting point. It reaches back 
in some form to the mythology of the past, as far as history 
goes. It can no longer be assumed in the light of knowledge 
guided by comparative mythology, and the prehistoric sci- 
ences, that the third chapter of Genesis supplies us with the 
record of a revelation of historical fact, divinely given at 
some definite time, or even as the prehistoric story whose 
form and details were wholly the creation of the writer's 
imagination. 

It is a long record dating back 8000 years, which presents 
a complicated past history for our investigation. The stu- 
dent who would desire to trace the history of the Fall Story, 
using the early chapters of Genesis as a starting point, must 
work backwards from this narrative, to its mythological 
source, and even as far as possible into the condition that 
brought about these sources; as well as forward to the de- 
velopments familiar to students of the doctrine as it was ex- 
pounded by scholastic theology in the period of its highest 
elaboration. But I can only give a brief sketch in this 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 125 

article of the history of the gradual development of the 
theory of the origin of sin and Satan, as it is involved in the 
doctrine derived from the Fall story and refer to some of the 
scriptural passages from which these doctrines have been 
derived. It Will be necessary, so far as possible, to ascer- 
tain the meaning this narrative had for the age in which it 
received its form. This can only be done by divesting our- 
selves of all ideas which familiar later developments of 
thought have taught us to read into it; and by putting our- 
selves a,s nearly as we can into the mental attitude of its 
writer. 

In the first place, we are told certain things by Dillman, 
Tennant, and many other writers, who have thoroughly 
investigated and explored the fields of comparative religion, 
of mythology, and of race psychology, and have arrived 
at such facts that throw a greater light than ever before, 
upon the sources of history, that give a more correct idea of 
the elements of which it is composed. 

They say that the Paradise story, as found in the Bible 
belongs to the class of writings called the Javist, or prophetic 
documents, and this is believed to be derived from more an- 
cient sources, either written, or oral, or both. The time at 
which the Javist history was written, and the length of time 
occupied in committing its material to writing, has not been 
definitely ascertained, but the date assigned to it, is about 
800 years B. C. The history of the account of the loss of 
Paradise, was first reduced to writing in the age of the ear- 
liest prophets. It seems to coincide with the progress and 
development of that period, when they had attained to that 
advancement in religious thought and reflection. 



126 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

We may notice first, in illustration of this belief, that their 
ideas of God were very crude. He is represented as pos- 
sessing many purely human characteristics. He walks in 
the garden to enjoy the cool of the evening. He makes 
clothes for Adam and Eve. He smells the savors of Noah's 
sacrifice. He is wiser than men, but his knowledge is limited. 
He needs to come down to see the Tower of Babel, and to 
ascertain by His own investigation whether the wickedness 
of Sodom is as great as He has heard. God is assigned 
many ethical attributes, but his character is not as yet very 
perfectly moralized. He apparently misrepresents to Adam 
and Eve, the consequences that would follow from par- 
taking of the tree of knowledge. He is jealous of man's en- 
croachment on his prerogatives of knowledge and immor- 
tality. 

These narratives evince a simplicity in toleration of 
ancient morality and religion, such as would have been 
impossible had they been the literary creation of writers 
thoroughly imbued with the severely ethical and controver- 
sial monotheistic ideas, which characterize the messages of 
the Prophets. Thus, this history of the development of the 
true conception of God, seems to be approaching, rather 
than to have attained, the prophetic standpoint. The con- 
struction and skill in which some of these stories appear on 
our written records, has suggested to our ablest scholars, that 
they owe their form to a gradual perfection, while being 
orally transmitted. 

However great the reverence of the collectors, for the 
venerable material which tradition yielded, there are ob« 
vious proofs that those who finally embodied it in the written 
record which we inherit, dealt freely with it in respect to 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 127 

expurgation and adaptation to a moral and religious pur- 
pose, and therefore stamped upon it the impress of their 
respective individualities. We have now to endeavor to 
ascertain what was the meaning which this individual who 
gave it its present written form, intended to convey to the 
people of his time. It is from the standpoint of that age 
alone, in order that we may fully comprehend its purport, 
that the story must be read. We will necessarily have to 
ignore the still earlier meaning, and concentrate our attention 
upon the implications which its compiler himself intended to 
convey. 

According to the interpretation which has been generally 
adopted, and read into it in later ages, the story is primarily 
an account of a fall of the human race in its first parents, 
through the instrumentality of Satan. It is not merely an 
account of the historical entrance of sin into the world, but 
also an explanation of the origin and universality of sinful- 
ness throughout mankind. There is no hint, however, in 
the passage itself, of Adam's moral condition being funda- 
mentally altered by his act of disobedience. 

The only allusion to the original estate of our first parents, 
in attributing to them the absence of shame at the fact that 
they were naked, of itself implies no more than that they 
shared the ignorance of childhood, or that they did not 
possess even the most elementary characteristics of civiliza- 
tion. The idea that their sin was the source of sinfulness of 
succeeding generations, or in any way an explanation of it, 
is altogether absent from the story, and so far as we can 
gather from all sources, it was foreign to the thought of the 
writer. 



128 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

It is to be concluded then, that the history contained in 
Genesis, was not intended by its compiler to supply an ex- 
planation of the cause of universal sinfulness. The most 
that it offers is an account of sin's actual beginning. Man- 
kind's capacity for sin from the first is assumed. Later 
Hebrew literature supports this conclusion, by strongly sug- 
gesting that, at the period in which this writing was compiled 
the time was not ripe for such advanced thought. The 
Javist writer must be said to have had no doctrine of a fall 
of the race of Adam, as the cause of the moral evil of 
Adam's posterity. 

The general results which we may be led to believe, may 
be summed up thus: the Fall story contains elements of 
various degrees of antiquity which were the natural pro- 
ducts of human thought at a relatively early stage of its 
development. It is a fusion of unexplained religious ideas, 
embodying conceptions which arose during the evolution of 
religious thought. It states the results of early reflection on 
matters pertaining to the beginnings of human life, and it 
was intended by the writer, as the equivalent of history, 
which at this time, was not clearly distinguished from pro- 
ducts of the imagination. It breathes however, the spirit of 
Hebrew religion, as it was passing into ethical monotheism. 
The narrative has been taken, both in ancient and modern 
times, to be a literal statement of historical truth. The 
fact, which the modern science of comparative religion has 
brought to light, that somewhat similar stories to those of the 
opening chapters of Genesis, occur widely scattered through 
the literary remains of ancient nations, appears to many in- 
vestigators in this field, to find its best explanation in the 
view that such stories were corrupted forms of a genuine 
tradition, handed down from the very beginning of human 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 129 

history ; which tradition, in its pure and true form, was en- 
shrined in the pages of Hebrew Scripture. But the idea 
is now generally abandoned by archaeologists and theol- 
ogians alike. Indeed, if man is evolved from a non-human 
ancestry; if his reason, language, morals, and religion are 
the product of gradual development, if his antiquity is what 
geology asserts it to be, and his earliest condition as human, 
that to which several sciences now strongly point, it is quite 
impossible to entertain at all, the view that the Fall Sory, 
and the legends kindred to it, embody any genuine tradition, 
once common to the race, or therefore, any scientific or his- 
torical truth. The narrative was probably regarded by its 
author as history or as a substitute for history. At any rate 
he was certainly intending to supply information as to the 
origin of things, and furnishing a record of the earliest do- 
ings of mankind. But it seems natural to believe that in its 
writer's day, it was somewhat difficult to estimate the dif- 
ference between imagination and poetry, especially if ven- 
erable, as tradition, and an actual fact. 

In bringing into this story things that happened in the 
long distant past, as the magical trees in the garden, and as 
the speaking serpent, and the account of Balaam's ass; 
they were not considered as extraordinary marvels, but as 
belonging to the natural course of things. Whether the 
writer intended them to be regarded as historical facts, is a 
question we cannot answer. The age in which we live, the 
line between the natural and supernatural, between legend 
and history, is clearly drawn: but in that day there was 
scarcely any distinction made between that which was pos- 
sible and that which was impossible. It was the dominant 
idea among the people of that day, that all animals had a 
spirit and could think and reason, similar to man, and it only 



130 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

required the gift of speech to talk. So it is not so very 
strange nor difficult to understand, how easy and natural 
it would be to convince men that animals, under certain 
conditions were possessed with the gift of speech. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 131 



Chapter IX 
Origin of the Stories in Genesis 

THERE are a great many people even in this age of 
progress and research who are not yet prepared to 
perceive the plain facts of science and history. When 
we arrive at that period of development, when we will 
know, and recognize the truths, the Christian religion will 
be purified of much of its mythological teaching, and many 
of the old traditional ideas will be relegated to the past. 

A great many good people seem to hold to the idea that 
if we accept a great many facts that have come to light in 
historical research, it will have a tendency to destroy re- 
ligion. But I think the progress of science and the ten- 
dencies of philosophic thought prevailing today, will lead 
to a cleaner conception of the world and the Bible, and 
bring with it not a denial of religion, but a deeper and more 
correct conception of many things in our religious teaching. 

The tendencies of the present age, and all scientific re- 
ligious teachers, in order to meet the changing religious views 
of the present time demand that there should be a restate- 
ment of the views entertained on many portions of the Bible. 

The books of the Pentateuch, and especially Genesis, are 
composite books, made up from several previously written 
mythical stories, and folklore talk and completed in the form 
in which we now have it after the captivity or about 450 
years before Christ. 



132 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

The time at which the earlier stories were reduced to 
writing and the length of the period occupied in committing 
its material to writing have not been ascertained. Various 
dates have been assigned from 900 to 700 B. C. But it is 
certain they cease to represent individual composers, they 
stand for a collection of oral tradition. However large 
may have been the part played by oral reciters of Genesis 
in giving them dramatic form, and however great the rever- 
ence of the collectors for the venerable material which tra- 
dition yielded, there are obvious proofs that those who 
finally embodied it in the written record which we inherit, 
dealt freely with it in respect to expurgation, to a moral and 
religious purpose, and therefore stamped upon it the impress 
of their respective individualities. When the materials of 
these stories were taking their present form, Hebrew re- 
ligion was of a comparatively primitive kind and Hebrew 
theology, as distinguished from the mythology which preced- 
ed it, was in a slate of a beginning but little above it. These 
considerations should make us cautious, lest we attribute 
to the narrative, a doctrinal significance deeper than its 
writers knew, and bear in mind that much of the theological 
suggestiveness which so many of our day, read into it, was 
undesigned, and not thought of by the author. But man- 
kind for age after age, have been profoundly interested in 
this Old Testament literature, and great philosophers and 
religious teachers for many centuries have constantly read 
into it their own reflections and ideas, which have largely 
influenced the religious literature of the world. 

In the account given in Genesis of the beginning of hu- 
man history, if the writer intended to give the development 
of sin in the world it must be observed that the first trans- 
gression is not treated any differently in import from the 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 133 

ether stories. It is not intimated in any way that the sin of 
Adam was such a momentous catastrophe, as was afterward 
lead into it. 

The writer must be said to have had no doctrine of a 
fall of the race in Adam, as the cause of the moral evil of 
Adam's posterity. It is repudiated by the most learned 
writers on this question, but the eating of the forbidden 
tree of knowledge was intended to represent the means by 
which man acquired moral ideas, the awakening of a con- 
science or the knowledge of the difference between virtue 
and sin. For the narrative represents the first pair as under- 
standing beforehand the difference between obedience and 
disobedience. It is, on the contrary, general knowledge, 
which is here prohibited, and which man is represented as 
anxious to possess, knowledge which, in the highest sense, 
belongs only to God, and in appropriating which, man is 
regarded as exceeding the limits of his nature, as encroach- 
ing upon divine prerogatives, and as making himself inde- 
pendent of and equal to God. 

It is the knowledge of the secrets, and mysteries of the 
world, a knowledge which is power, and which at the same 
time, involves a break with the state of nature. Adam and 
Eve are represented as being expelled from Eden, not be- 
cause they had wrongly acquired the knowledge of good and 
evil, but because they had gotten possession of it. This 
knowledge has made them so dangerous to God, who says, 
the man is become as one of us, that if they should now ob- 
tain further divine rights of immortality, by eating of the tree 
of life, his unique majesty, and superiority would be threat- 
ened. Therefore, they are driven out of Paradise and de- 
prived of access to the tree of life. The knowledge im- 



134 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

parted by the tree, then could scarcely be the discernment 
of good and evil; this could not make its human possessor 
a dangerous rival to the Deity. 

To acquire knowledge by eating this fruit was absolutely 
forbidden, but on the other hand it was quite different with 
the tree of life. To attain eternal life all that was necessary 
was by actually eating of the forbidden fruit. It was not 
to be attained at all by the moral discipline involved in 
resisting the temptation to eat it. We therefore conclude 
that the knowledge of good and evil spoken of in this nar- 
rative, is that knowledge which makes man more or less 
hard of nature, the wisdom which can turn natural forces 
to human use. 

Thus the Paradise story attempts to connect all the 
misery, pain, and struggle in human life, with the desire for 
progress in knowledge and culture, and at the same time, in 
harmony with the early Hebrew conception, that man in his 
childlike innocence should be content to remain just as God 
had made him, and make no effort to change his condition, 
but live on in ease forever, with God to provide for all his 
necessities, and that he was expelled from Eden's bowers, 
just because man had a desire to make the transition from 
ignorance to intelligence and because it in turn has been 
connected with the introduction of physical evils, with 
a transition from innocence to guilt. 

That this reading of the narrative involves the representa- 
tion of God as hostile to man's intellectual development is 
no difficulty. Such an idea is in keeping with the rudimen- 
tary theology of the age to which, in its earlier oral forms, 
the narrative belongs. For God is not, for ancient Hebrew 
writers, so far exalted above man as to be omniscient in the 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 135 

sense of knowing without the need of learning, or to be su- 
perior to the necessity of safe-guarding His supremacy 
against numbers or strength, and longevity, as well as against 
the knowledge which is especially said to confer on man, 
likeness to God. 

The original thought in this story reveals itself in the 
verse, which assigns fear of man's becoming a rival power, 
as the reason why he was expelled from Paradise, and on 
that account was prohibited from partaking of the tree of 
knowledge. The writer evidently assumes without question, 
the justice of the divine resentment, to think that man would 
have the audacity to have a desire to be as wise as God and 
live forever. So he acquiesces in the punishment of the sin- 
ners, and attributes to Adam and Eve the same culpable in- 
tention as that of the builders of the Tower of Babel. The 
idea of God's strong resentment of any form of human ex- 
altation against Himself, as of encroachment upon His 
divine prerogatives, is conspicuous in many Old Testament 
writings, according to which pride and self reliance and de- 
fiance constitute the essence of sin. 

All these stories found in the first part of Genesis, such 
as the story of creation, the fall story, the flood, and the 
tower of Babel, are all extracts from different legendary 
narratives and betray signs of being compounded from quite 
different sources. 

It is these several stories, each a whole in itself, that are 
to be considered as parts of which Genesis is made up. 
The writers of these stories may have done much in the way 
of purging, adapting, arranging, and blending their material 
together, but in all probability they took little or no part in 
the creation of its substance. For all the different peoples 



136 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

of the earth in their beginning have similar stories, some of 
them written on tablets of clay or stone, by people that 
existed four thousand years before Abraham was born. 

For today a great searchlight has been turned on those 
mounds in the plains of Shinar, in which are found the ruins 
of ancient cities built by the Accadians, a race of people that 
attained a high state of civilization long before the Baby- 
lonian empire was founded, and even thousands of years 
before the Semitic race, from which the Hebrews descended, 
had come into existence. In those ancient ruins are found 
large chambers filled with tablets upon which are written a 
great many things that throw much light upon the stories of 
Genesis. We there find the story of creation, the story of 
Paradise, the story of the flood, and also a code of laws 
writter by Hammurabi, the king, which is very similar to the 
Mosaic law, and some sections word for word. This 
shows conclusively where a large portion of the Mosaic law 
comes from, and the origin of all the stories in Genesis. 

When the stories came to be for the first time reduced to 
writing by the Hebrew writers, they were already of high 
antiquity, they had existed as unwritten folk lore for many 
generations, and different elements in them are of a very dif- 
ferent age. 

It was during this period of oral transmission that the 
variations of the myths arose of whose existence we have 
some evidence in Genesis itself, and in other parts of the 
Old Testament. Distortion, embellishment, and elimination, 
due to the inherent impossibility of oral tradition, to keep 
itself pure and unaltered, and also deliberate adaptation to 
the changed circumstances of life, and diverse stages of re- 
ligious development, must inevitably have affected the form 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 137 

of the folk lore of the Hebrews, during the interval between 
their settlement in Canaan, and the commencement of a na- 
tional literature after the establishment of the kingdom. To 
illustrate how the origin of some of these stories is being 
brought to light, I will give the story of the Tower of Babel, 
as given by Edgar James Banks, and also the results of Dr. 
Petrie's exploration in the land of the Pharaohs. 

"In ancient Hebrew literature is a story that in the 
early days of the world the few descendants of Adam and 
Eve, while wandering in the plain of Shinar, decided to per- 
petuate their name by building a tower which would reach to 
heaven. The level alluvial plain of Shinar, which in later 
millenniums was called Babylonia, yielded no stones, and for 
building material the people were obliged to invent bricks of 
clay and burn them; for cement they employed bitumen 
from the neighboring hot springs. Soon the tower reared its 
head toward heaven. 

"God, hearing of the tower which his ambitious people 
were building, was displeased with their presumption, over- 
turned it by sending fire down upon it, and, to prevent them 
from repeating their attempt, he gave to each a knowledge 
of a special language of his own. The people of the plain 
of Shinar, thus unable to understand each other, and con- 
fused by the strange sounds about them, speedily scattered 
throughout the earth to escape discord and find peace. Thus 
the tower which caused their confusion was called the tower 
of Babel. To the Hebrews the story explained the origin 
of brickmaking; it accounted for the variety of languages 
and narrated how it happened that mankind was scattered 
throughout the earth. 



138 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

"Most stories of the ancients, from whatever part of the 
world they may come, or however much or little they may 
appeal to our credulity, are based upon some foundation of 
fact. An interesting feature of the work of the archaeolo- 
gist is to find the kernel from which the story has grown. 

"Of the biblical story of Babel the name of the tower 
suggests the locality in which one must search for it. Since 
the great English traveler, Sir John Mandeville, whose book 
of adventures, both real and imaginary, was for centuries 
so popular, pretended to have visited Babylon, the tower 
of Babel has been associated with one of several ancient ruins 
which rise high above the Babylonian plain. During the 
last two years, while exploring in Mesopotamia, for the 
University of Chicago, I have visited them. 

"The tower which many of the earlier scholars supposed 
to be described in the biblical story stands in the plain about 
two hours northeast of Bagdad. Akkerkuf, as it is called 
by the Arabs of the vicinity, is a low mound, at one end of 
which rises a solid mud brick tower more than 100 feet 
above the plain. Its outer casing of square, burned bricks 
has fallen away, or it was taken for the construction of 
Bagdad and other modern cities; the large unbaked bricks 
of the interior are being gradually worn away by the rains. 

"Half a century ago, when the scientific explorer who 
could read the cuneiform inscriptions upon the bricks in 
the ruins, began to explore the country, Akkerkuf was dis- 
covered to be a tower belonging to a temple which stood as 
late as 3,000 years ago. It was therefore, obliged to yield 
the distinction of being regarded as the ancient tower of 
Babel to Birs, a ruin close to the city of Babylon. At the 
present time Assyriologists are generally agreed, and with 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 139 

reason, that Birs is the tower which even in ancient times was 
known as the tower of Babel and which gave rise to the 
ancient Hebrew story. 

"Birs, the modern name of the tower, is derived from 
Borsippa, as the ancient suburb of Babylon in which it 
stood was called To visit it one must cross the Euphrates at 
the town of Hillah, which the modern Arabs have built upon 
the site of Babylon. Two hours to the west rises the enor- 
mous ruin, by far the most imposing in Babylonia, if not in 
the world. Its mountainlike cone, fully 2,000 feet in cir- 
cumference at the base, rises at the present time 156 feet 
above the plain, originally it was much higher. The ascent 
is so steep that the climb up its sides is difficult. At a 
height of 1 1 5 feet, the climber stops, unable to go farther. 
I believe that as yet no one has scaled the brick work which 
projects from its summit. The mass of solid masonry has 
been split in two by lightning, which plays about it during 
every passing thunderstorm, and along the sides are huge 
masses of fused bricks, almost indistinguishable from igne- 
ous stone, which have been hurled from above. 

"The tower is constructed of large, square baked bricks, 
each measuring thirteen inches on its sides and three inches 
in thickness, and each is stamped in wedge-shaped letters 
with the name and titles of Nebuchadnezzar ; upon most of 
them the inscriptions are as legible as upon the day they 
were made. The bitumen from the hot springs at Hitt, up 
the Euphrates river, served as mortar, and layers of reed 
mats were occasionally spread between the courses. The 
large, square holes for the circulation of air, penetrating the 
tower at regular intervals, now provide homes for the foxes 
and other animals which inhabit the desert. 



140 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

"It is only since the young science of Assyriology has 
progressed and the architecture of Babylonia is better known 
that the real purpose of the Babylonian tower has been un- 
derstood. The Babylonian temple consisted of two dis- 
tinct parts — the tower and a series of rooms about its base. 
If one could look back to the time when the Babylonian 
temple was in use he would see a magnificent barbaric 
splendor seldom surpassed. The long, narrow hallways, 
always obscure, to lend them awe and mystery, were lined 
with the statues of the gods and kings. Some were in gold, 
others in marble or diorite; some were clothed in dresses 
of inscribed gold ; the stone of others was tinted to give it a 
natural or striking color; the eyeballs were of ivory, the 
pupils were of precious stones, and it is possible that their 
heads were covered with false hair to impart to them a life- 
like appearance. About their pedestals were vessels of 
precious metals and stones, wrought into fastastic shapes 
and constantly filled with food and drink. In my own exca- 
vations at Bismya, in central Babylonia, hundreds of marble 
lamps, vases carved with figures of animals and many in- 
laid with ivory and precious stones, present an almost per- 
fect example of a Babylonian temple service; these objects 
now form some of the rarest treasures of antiquity. 

"Other chambers about the base of the tower were oc- 
cupied by the priests. There they stored the sacrificial of- 
ferings of the people; there they composed and copied the 
hymns and psalms for the responsive singing of the temple 
service ; there upon the little tablets of clay they drew up the 
contracts of the people and stored them away for reference 
in case of dispute. To these chambers the people came with 
their offerings to worship the local god to whom they at- 
tributed their recovery from disease and safety from acci- 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 141 

dent; there, too, they brought their dead to be cremated and 
left their ashes in the common pit, mingled with others who 
had been cremated before them, and there, if we may believe 
the conclusions of Professor Delitzsch, the most illustrious of 
all archaeologists, the young maid, in thankfulness for all 
the blessings which she received, went to sacrifice her vir- 
ginity to the local god, who was represented by the temple 
priest. 

"As interesting as the lower half of the Babylonian temple 
was, the tower which reared its head high above it was 
equally important. Until recently it has been supposed 
that the tower was a peculiarity of late Babylonian times, 
but at Bismya one of the most perfect structures I uncov- 
ered was the base of a stage tower more than 6,000 years 
old. It now appears that the tower may have been the 
original temple and that the chambers about its base were 
a later development. Perhaps the primitive object of the 
tower, as the Bible story suggests, was to provide a path- 
way to heaven, or, as the older scholars suppose, it was 
built that the early astronomers might better study the stars, 
or that it might serve merely as a land mark to guide the 
wandering people or a watch tower from which one could 
observe the approach of the enemy even when far distant, 
as does the modern Arab on his watch tower today. 

"It might have been a retreat during the extreme heat of 
Babylonian summer where the king or priests, high above 
the heat of the city and the sandstorms, could pass the 
hours in comfort, while the common people were sweltering 
below in a heat which now registers 1 50 degrees. These are 
theories of the past; now it is practically certain that the 
tower was the support of the shrine of the local god. There, 



142 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

high above the plain where he could look far out over the 
country which he ruled, reposed the god of the land. From 
there he ruled and watched over his most distant people. 
To satisfy him, food and drink in costly vessels were con- 
stantly before him. To attend his needs, if we may believe 
Herodotus, a priestess dwelt continually on the summit of 
the tower of Babel. It is said that the oldest and ugliest 
female that the country afforded was selected for the po- 
sition lest the priests while performing their religious duties 
should anger the god whom she served by smiling on her. 

"Several excavators have dug about the base of the old 
tower of Babel, but it is to Sir Henry Rawlinson that the 
credit for the best work is due. In the time of Nebuchad- 
nezzar, the tower consisted of seven stages, resembling seven 
square boxes at different sizes placed one upon another. It 
was then known as the Tower of the Seven Spheres, and 
each of the various stages was colored according to the planet 
to which it was dedicated. The lower stage measured 727 
feet upon each edge and 26 feet in height; its outer layer 
of bricks was black, probably covered with bitumen. The 
second stage measured 232 feet, the third 188, the fourth' 
146, and thus they decreased in size until the upper stage 
was just large enough to support the shrine. One stage was 
faced with blue glazed bricks, another with red glazed 
bricks. Major Rawlinson believed that the bricks of one 
stage were overlaid with gold and another with silver. Even 
in the present impoverished condition of the country, the im- 
mense domes and minarets of the shrines of the sacred cities, 
Kerbela and Nejef are covered with gold. In ancient times 
the tower of Babel was one of the wonders of the world, and 
so today, in all the world there is hardly a more imposing 
ruin. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 143 

"While Major Rawlinson was excavating at the base of 
the tower he removed from small niches near the corners sev- 
eral large barrel-shaped clay cylinders, covered with beau- 
tifully preserved cuneiform inscriptions. The cylinders now 
in the British museum, were written by Nebuchadnezzar or 
by his order, and placed, we might say, in the corner stone, 
in the inscription Nebuchadnezzar, after describing the re- 
construction of the temple, says: 

1 'The tower of Borsippa, which a former king had erect- 
ed and completed to the height of forty-two cubits, whose 
summit he did not finish, fell to ruins in ancient times. There 
was no proper care of the drains for its water. Rain and 
storms had washed away its brick. The tiles of its roof were 
broken. The great god Marduk urged me to restore it. 
I did not alter its site or change its foundation walls. At a 
favorable time I renewed its brick work and its roofing tiles 
and I wrote my name on the cornices of the edifice, I built it 
anew as it had been ages before. I erected its pinnacle as 
it was in remote days.' 

"How does it happen that in Hebrew literature there 
exists a story of this old tower? The answer is not difficult. 
In the year 586 B. C. the Jews were taken by Nebuchad- 
nezzar into captivity and during their exile of fifty years 
in Babylonia, they were undoubtedly employed in the re- 
construction of the tower of Babel. They worked side by 
side with the captives from almost every other country in 
the eastern world, and the medley of strange languages was 
constantly ringing in their ears. For months they probably 
laboriously carried the heavy square bricks and mortar to a 
tremendous height, a strange occupation for them, for bricks 
were seldom used in their own rocky country. The lightning 



144 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

of every storm hurled down masses of the bricks from the 
summit of the tower until it seemed as if God was destroying 
it. The thoughts of these things were constantly in their 
minds. In after years, as they returned from exile to their 
own homes, is it strange that with the oriental fondness of 
narration, they told of a tower of bricks which the people of 
ancient times built to high heaven, that God, angry, sent 
heavenly fire to destroy it and the languages of the people 
were so strange and unintelligible to each other, that they 
scattered throughout the east as did the captives at the 
close of their exile. Thus the story of the tower of Babel is 
true." 

RESULTS OF DR. PETRIE's EXPLORATION IN THE LAND OF 
THE PHARAOHS 

By a series of bold and brilliant discoveries, the reward 
of arduous and sustained labor, Dr. Flinders Perrie has re- 
molded the history of the eastern Mediterranean during the 
last ten years. Spelling out the records of broken stone 
and shattered pottery, he has given a new meaning to the 
word "ancient." 

Greeks and Romans are now seen to have been mere 
moderns, almost treading on our own heels, while far back 
we look down a long vista of culture and civilization, lasting 
through many thousand years and stretching around the 
whole basin of the inland sea. He and his friends — for I 
take him simply as the most prominent man of a group — 
have given us a new conception of history, a new reading 
of the modern world, a new idea of human growth. They 
have it literally dug out from the bowels of the earth, in the 
heat and solitude of exile, a new history of man. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 14o 

Now they are extending their work further. Hitherto 
Dr. Petrie's work has been mainly, I think entirely, in 
Egypt. But, like Moses, he has not always been on the 
best terms with Pharaoh, and this year a small difference as 
to state rights has led to an exodus. Shaking the dust of 
Egypt from off his feet — happily without insisting on any 
plagues — Mr. Petrie has gone several days' camel journey 
with tents and his workmen, off into the wilderness to dig 
there. Following closely in the track of his precursor in exile, 
Mr. Petrie has gone to Sinai, and the results of a season's 
work there are shown in a small crowded room, within the 
building of the London university in Gower street. 

Briefly these stones seem to explain why Moses and his 
people wanted to go into the wilderness, for here, close to 
Sinai, Professor Petrie and his workers have found what is 
little less than a sort of Semitic Delphi — a great center of 
worship, prayer and sacrifice for the whole Semitic world. 
It was Niebuhr who first discovered that there was a temple 
near Sinai. But it might have been just an ordinary Egyp- 
tian temple of Osiris, Isis or any of that motley crowd who 
dog the days and haunt the nights of the modern Egyptian 
tourist. 

It has now been thoroughly dug up and has been discov- 
ered to be a Semitic temple, a temple for the Jews and their 
kindred races. It contains a vast number of cubicles for pil- 
grims who went to dream dreams after the manner of Jacob 
and Joseph and hundreds of little "Bethel" stones which they 
erected, even as Jacob did, to celebrate a really fortunate 
dream. 

Of course Dr. Petrie is much too cautious a student to sug- 
gest any connection between this temple and the Jewish 



146 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

exodus. But may not the suggestion at any rate be thrown 
out that it was to this spot that Moses first wished to lead 
the Jewish exiles? Pharaoh, acting after his kind, refused to 
compromise, but are we quite sure that if he had the Jews 
might not have gone to Sinai, sacrificed there and returned 
to Egypt? 

We cannot tell. When all is said and done, the exca- 
vators in Egypt have come across very few traces of the 
Jewish captivity. That episode of Egyptian history figured 
very small in the immense perspective dynasties. The Egyp- 
tians probably regarded the Jews as a very "little people,'* 
and looked over their heads with true imperialist disdain. 
"This," they said, "is the day of Eig empires." They had 
many such troubles with small nations — wandering desert 
tribes. Ethiopians, "vile sons of Cush," and what not. 

The Egyptologists have done their best for the British 
public, jealous of the Old Testament. 

There were so many civilizations in Egypt — so many 
tracks have been covered up — that we must not be surprised 
at finding few direct traces of the stay of the Jews. So many 
people were carried captive that the memory of the Jews was 
lost among them. But that is what adds to the value of this 
Semitic temple at Sinai. 

One most astonishing thing about the find is the discov- 
ery of a great mass of burnt ashes, the remains of many 
thousands of burnt offerings by other Semite visitors — 
perhaps from Tyre or Sidon or other parts of that great # 
Semite world which was eclipsed by the rise of Assyria. 

Some of the pilgrims who tried, through the gate of 
dreams, to foresee the future, must have died in that sterile 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 14? 

valley, for Dr. Petrie has discovered tombs unlike any in 
Egypt — tombs built in the shape of beehives and containing 
curious bracelets of shell. Or perhaps these were the lonely 
tombs of the Egyptian miners, far from the embalmers, 
digging here for turquoises. Those miners kept their food 
in jars and when they went home to Egypt they buried their 
jars for safety in the soil below their huts. Dr. Petrie has 
found many of these jars just as they were left. The miners 
who left them never returned to dig them up. Who can tell 
what happened ? What chance of fate or death befell them 
on the way? 

Delving in this under world of the past is a perpetual 
voyage of romance. It surpasses the journeys of Columbus 
or Cortez. In that wonderful climate where the sun and air 
and sand combine to annihilate time, the digger always feels 
as if he might suddenly enter a new lost world, where man 
possessed all we are searching after with endless travail of 
spirit. There are times when the explorer almost feels like 
an intruder. Suddenly the pick strikes against something, 
and he sees revealed before him the toy horse of some long 
dead Egyptian child, the dice of some Egyptian gambler 
who has long paid his reckoning, the marbles of some boy, the 
comb and glass of some fine lady, the distaff of some poor 
woman. He feels like one who has broken unawares into 
another man's house and finds himself alone with the sacred 
privacies of intimate life. 

There are many such objects in this little exhibition — 
objects found in the Greco-Roman settlements by Drs. 
Grenfell and Hunt. There are beautiful bits of glass and 
mosaic — scent and perfume bottles with wax stoppers, left 
on some Roman lady's toilet table — reed pens with sharp. 



148 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

split points, to writ on wax — ivory hairpins, egg whippers, 
all the small devices of luxury known to an advanced civili- 
zation. There are vestiges of the last period of Egypt's 
long civilization — the eve before the long night of Arab bar- 
barism. 

At the other end, from the earliest dawn of time, there is 
a collection of the rudest flint instruments used by prehistoric 
man in the Nile valley, and found on the tops of the hills at 
Thebes. From a study of these flints and the positions in 
which they are found, the Egyptologists are gradually de- 
ciphering an ancient civilization far back behind the earliest 
Pharaoh — behind the great pre-Pharaonic civilization that 
occupied another 5,000 years — perhaps the very beginning 
of man. 

These flints belonged to men who lived at least 10,000 
years ago. Then the Nile valley was filled almost to the 
summits of the hills with a great flood of water and man 
therefore gathered on the mountain summits, a precarious 
tenant of a bare world. 

Such have been the results of past work, but Dr. Petrie's 
work in the Sinai district opens a new field. Some of the 
"higher critics" tell us nowadays that no exodus took place. 
These discoveries at Sinai do not seem to support them, but 
rather to confirm a narrative which, if entirely untrue, is cer- 
tainly one of the most amazing bits of convincing fiction in 
all literature. 

But may there not be more secrets hidden under those 
yellow sands? This was the track by which the Jews are 
said to have wandered. Here was the mountain whence 
came the laws of conduct which the world still reverences 
above all others. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 14j, 

I have given these two witnesses as evidence of the discov- 
eries in Bible lands, to illustrate the way in which a story 
can find a place of beginning, and how it can grow and de- 
velop in the religious ideas of a people, influenced by coun- 
try and priests. A great many more might be cited to show 
man's sense of wonder at the things he saw, and his explana- 
tion of the mysteries about him, which had a wonderful in- 
fluence in shaping his first religious conceptions. In recogniz- 
ing the first religious development in man, we do not have to 
believe, that some great supernatural phenomena had to be 
presented to man's vision, but the first religious development 
that we find in man, are those natural instincts which promote 
usefulness and devotion to the right. 

"I am not a believer in all the supernatural stories that are 
found in the Bible. As to stories of wonderful things and 
events, which have been called supernatural, some are lies, 
many are merely things not understood by observers. I 
think the miracle stories that have figured so largely in all 
religions have nearly all belonged to one or another of these 
classes. 

"There is a stage in the development of a people when re- 
ligion and patriotism are one. This is when God is con- 
ceived as a God of one particular nation or tribe. The 
union of patriotism and religion was never so perfectly ex- 
emplified as in the history of the people of Israel. When 
piety and patriotism and religion are one the God is conceived 
as the king, and the government is spoken of as theocracy. 
No theocracy was ever so complete as that required by the 
priestly ideal of Israel. 



150 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

"All history written by men is vitiated to a degree by the 
personal bias of the writers. But when a writer's religion 
and patriotism are one he is apt to use what he knows of tra- 
ditions of the past to emphasize the more of this teaching. 

"In reading the Bible we ought to make sufficient allow- 
ance for this, so that we may believe that the laws of nature 
have always been the same, and that human nature and hu- 
man powers and length of life have always been much the 



"Our religion has developed along natural lines just as all 
others have developed. It is my desire and hope to show in 
this book that religion is something native in the human race, 
exhibiting different phases in different countries and times. 
Religion is not only a great reality, showing itself as such in 
every age and race, but it has been everywhere of benefit to 
mankind. If this is so, it means that religion is not to decay 
and pass away in our time. 

"Our test of the worth of anybody's religion today is per- 
sonal character. We ask whether a man's religion makes 
him truthful, honest, gentle and kind. 

"There is coming a higher religion, universal, the brother- 
hood of all mankind, worshipping the one God the Father, 
not of kings, only, but of the human race. As it comes pa- 
triotism will be swallowed up in love of all lands — and the 
word 'God hath made of one blood all nations to dwell on 
the face of the earth and determine the bounds of their 
habitation that they should seek the Lord and find Him' will 
be fulfilled." 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 15 1 

In the early ages of thought every phenomenon of nature 
was looked upon as the direct result of supernatural agencies. 
A God was assumed to account for every unexplained fact of 
nature. But gradually this crude conception has been re- 
placed by the idea of a single God governing nature by law. 
Now the theory of evolution is simply a part of this general 
tendency assuming that law has also produced the present 
organic world. It has met naturally with momentary opposi- 
tion, as did the Copernican theory, or the theories of geology. 
But like the other theories it has been found to demand the 
necessity of an all-wise Creator rather than do away with 
one. All of this evidence together forms an argument that no 
one who has carefully studied the matter has been inclined 
to deny. It is true that all of the difficulties have not yet 
been cleared away, and that some of them seem to indicate, 
that there are other laws of life not comprised in the theory 
of evolution. Beyond the confines of this earthly life, in the 
realms of the eternal hereafter we would like to know some- 
thing of the hidden mysteries of that life. 



152 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 



Chapter X 
God's Way of Doing Things 

I SINCERELY believe in a personal God — who is the 
the author and foundation of all life, but I also be- 
lieve that God has but one way of doing things, that 
this way may be described in one word — Evolution — which 
simply means the way of growth, or development, that he is 
ever present in the world of nature throughout this vast uni- 
verse, and that there are no laws of nature which are not the 
laws of God, that all nature and all life is regulated by fixed, 
unchangeable laws, and that there are not occasional inter- 
ventions in the order of life, which bear witness to a con- 
ence, but that life is itself a perpetual witness to a con- 
tinuous and unbroken progress. The history of that process 
has been one of continuous progressive growth, from a lower 
to a higher, from a simpler to a more complex organization, 
under the influence of resident forces, and in accordance 
with law. I do not mean by resident forces, that God con- 
tinually pours forth the energies of His divine will into creat- 
ed forms, and carries them forward to their further develop- 
ment. Any man of science would understand that defini- 
tion to mean that evolution of any form of life takes place 
wholly by means of the forces already resident in the forms 
of existence which had been realized in the preceding stages 
of history. I believe that all resident forces are divine and 
that God is in His world and that His method of work is by 
growth and that the history of the world, whether it be the 
history of creation, of Providence, or of redemption, is the 
history of a growth in accordance with the great law of evo- 
lution. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 15b 

Evolution is simply a history of the steps by which the 
world has come to be what it is. It may not be as yet cor- 
rectly told, but like the record of another set of facts, some 
of the writers and thinkers may make statements that are 
more or less colored or somewhat biased by their theological 
training. Some may advance one theory of the process and 
some another, but that does not do away with the story. 
Whether the history of a nation be told by one historian or 
another the facts remain the same, and whether evolution be 
told by Huxley or Wallace, we accept the story so far as it 
io in accordance with nature and no more. 

At present the record of this story cannot be fully told, 
and it may be centuries before it is wholly finished, and yet 
even now enough is known, that the outlines of a continuous 
story are beginning to appear. 

Every man believes that to a large extent the divine pro- 
cesses are processes of growth. He believes that all veget- 
able matter in the world has come to its present condition by 
growth from earlier forms and that this principle of growth 
applies to the animal kingdom as well. He believes too, in 
growth as a principle of history, of literature and of religion. 
If he believes anything at all he cannot help but believe that 
all the processes of God are processes of growth. 

As God makes the oak out of the acorn ; the rose out of the 
cutting, the man out of the babe, the nation out of a colony, 
and the literature out of the alphabet so He has made all 
things by the development of lower forms to higher. 

So far as we can see, everywhere throughout the universe, 
God is never a manufacturer, but always does His work by 
the process of growth. This process is produced by forces 



154 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

that lie within the phenomena themselves. The tools that 
God uses are in the structure that is being formed, or in its 
environment. The force that makes the rose what it is, in- 
heres in the plant, in the soil, in the sunlight. God dwells 
in nature, fashioning it according to His will, by vital pro- 
cesses from within, not by mechanical processes from with- 
out. 

God does not dwell in some far away distant sphere, 
seated upon some majestic throne, like a mighty king, look- 
ing down upon the creatures He has fashioned, and made 
with his own hands, as was formerly believed. The former 
theory of creation was that God furnished everything ready 
made as a manufacturer would. It is that God said to 
himself one day six thousand years ago, "I will make a 
world" and he proceeded to make it in six successive days, 
and that when six days were over the world was finished. 
As science disclosed the history of the past, men changed 
their conception of the creative days to longer and longer 
periods of time. 

Geologists tell us from what they have learned in study- 
ing the history of the earth's crust, and the various stratas 
found in its formation, that it has taken millions of years, 
in its slow process of growth to be fitted for the habitation of 
man. But still the conception of manufacturing lingers in the 
thought of the Christian church. 

A great many people, and especially among the better 
educated, are awakening to the new conception of creation 
and are coming to accept the evolutionary theory, which 
begins with the nebular hypothesis and which supposes that 
in some far off epoch misty matter hung nebulous in the 
universe of space. It came together as a globe under the 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 155 

law of attraction and gravitation. It began its revolution, 
set in motion by that infinite and eternal energy which is an 
infinite and eternal mystery, and which I believe is God. As 
it revolved, by the very process of revolution it flattened at 
the poles. As it revolved it cooled, the mist turned to 
water, the water to solid. 

From the revolving globe a ring, like the ring of Saturn 
was flung off, and the revolving ring itself was broken by 
the very process of revolution into separate luminaries. So 
grew the moons, so the planetary system. In this globe 
was, as there is, life — that is an infinite and eternal energy 
which is an infinite and eternal mystery — that is God. 

Out of this life, grew as the rose grew from its seed, the 
lower forms, by successive processes from these lower forms, 
other higher forms, and from these others still higher, until 
a* last the world with all of its myriad of living beings be- 
came what it is today. 

There never was a time when the world was done. It 
is still undergoing change. The same processes that were 
going on in the creative days throughout the universe are 
going on now. Still the nebula are gathering together in 
globes. Still globes are beginning their revolution, still 
they are flattening at the poles, yet they are cooling and be- 
coming solid, still in them are springing up new forms of 
life. In our own globe the same forces that were operative 
in the past to make the world what it is are operative today. 
Still chasms are being made by earthquakes, all the methods 
and all the processes that went on in those first great days 
are still proceeding. 



156 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

Every day is a creative day. God is always creating. 
Such briefly and imperfectly is the doctrine of evolution. 
I give this brief outline of what evolution involves to show 
more clearly that those who accept evolution as the process 
by which all things were created, including man, cannot ac- 
cept the narrative as contained in the three first chapters of 
Genesis as being a true account of historical facts. It can 
no longer be assumed with all the knowledge we possess, 
and in the light of knowledge yielded by comparative myth- 
ology and the light that we are getting from pre-historic 
sources, that the third chapter of Genesis supplies us with the 
record of a revelation of historical fact divinely given at 
some definite time, but it is a story whose form and details 
were wholly the creations of its writer's imagination. 

Then if we accept this story as being only pre-historic 
tradition and the story of Adam's transgression and fall and 
expulsion has no reality, and the great accuser no existence, 
we will have to admit that the teaching of the Christian 
church, based upon the writings of Paul in regard to the fall 
of the human race, through the power and influence of the 
devil, is apparently inconsistent with the teaching of science 
and the facts in history. 

In all ages of the Christian church the Devil has been 
considered as a very interesting personality, grotesque, 
romantic, humorous, pathetic and even grand and tragic. 
The origin of a belief in a devil and its development and 
the nature of the idea of evil is considered in another pre- 
vious chapter. We recognize the fact that God is above all, 
and His presence is both permanent and continuous, and 
beyond the bound of human thought. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 157 

God, as He manifests Himself in the universe, is very 
definite. His being is universal, and His nature does not 
consist of indifferent generalities, but exhibits a distinct 
oneness in physical nature, as well as in the domain of 
spirit. 

Lyman Abbott says, "There are two methods which the 
Christian teacher may pursue in meeting this conclusion. 
He may declare that if this conclusion is accepted the Chris- 
tian religion is overthrown, because the Christian religion 
depends upon an acceptance of the scientific accuracy of the 
first chapter of Genesis; or he may accept the conclusion of 
the evolutionist as certainly probable, if not absolutely 
demonstrable, and may attempt to show that the Christian's 
faith in the reality of sin as an awful fact, and the reality of 
redemption as a glorious fact, is entirely consistent with the 
opinion that man has ascended from a lower animal order, 
and that development or growth is God's way of doing 
things; and he may maintain that the first chapters of Gen- 
esis are not to be regarded as authoritative scientific state- 
ments, respecting the methods of creation, the origin of the 
race, or his duration upon the earth." 

I firmly believe that the former method, which sets the- 
ological theories against scientifically ascertained facts, is 
fatal to the current theology and injurious to the spirit of re- 
ligion; and that the second method which frankly recog- 
nizes the facts of life, and appreciates the spirit of the sci- 
entists, whose patient and assiduous endeavor has brought 
those facts to light, will commend the spirit of religion to 
the new generation, and will benefit — not impair — theology 
as a science, by compelling its reconstruction. 



158 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

I think the conclusion of all those thinkers and scientists 
who have devoted so much time to the' study of embryology 
and the origin of the race is the most probable and it is an 
unmistakable fact that we are animals, and ascended from 
a lower type of animals. We are compelled to accept the 
fact whether we like it or not. We also know it to be a 
fact that we are more than animals and that there is a wide 
gap between man and brute. This is clearly shown in the 
fact that man has a language in which to communicate his 
thought which animals do not possess to any extent, and also 
in the extent of his reasoning powers which far exceeds that 
of animals. Not only is it apparent in his possible attain- 
ments, which far exceed that of the animal, but he pos- 
sesses above all a moral and spiritual nature, and a con- 
sciousness of right and wrong and a sense of the infinite and 
eternal. It is easy to demonstrate that man is more than an 
animal, but the question arises, how did he get it? In what 
period of his existence in the progress that he has made from 
a lower to a higher, did he attain to this great superiority, 
and in what way. On this difficult question the church has 
never agreed. Theologians have been divided in their opin- 
ion and attempted to give four separate answers. 

The first is creationism — the doctrine that into every man, 
at some stage of his existence, presumptively at the time of 
his birth, God, by a miraculous or supernatural act, implants 
the divine spirit. 

The second is traducianism — the doctrine that at some 
remote period in the history of the human race, God breathed 
the breath of divine life into some remote ancestor, and that 
the race has inherited that breath of life throughout all sub- 
sequent ages. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 159 

The third is evolutionism — the doctrine that this higher 
life of man, this moral, this ethical, this spiritual nature, has 
been developed by natural processes, as the higher physical 
phases of life have been developed by natural processes. 

The fourth is conditional immortality — the doctrine that 
the spiritual nature is developed and made dominant in men 
only as by faith they lay hold on God, and that there are 
men upon the earth who to all intents and purposes are but 
little higher than the animals and will sink back into the 
animal and finally become extinct. 

It does not make any difference which one of these views 
one holds, he may still hold that man is two men. He may 
think that the divine element is implanted in each individual 
at birth ; or he may think that it was implanted in some indi- 
vidual at a certain point in the race development, and has 
since been inherited by all his posterity; or he may think 
that it is implanted by special acts of divine grace, not in all 
individuals but only in a certain elect; or he may believe 
that it comes through evolutionary processes eventually to 
all men, growing gradually out of that which is not spiritual, 
but whichever theory of its origin he entertains, he may be 
sure that this spiritual life exists today. 

We are in the possession of that spiritual life of con- 
science — faith — hope — love. On this fact religion is based. 
It does not matter materially where this spiritual life came 
from, or at what period in the progress of the race it began 
to appear. We accept the fact. And all religion has to 
do is to face the facts as they exist today, and meet the 
realities of the future, and let science deal with the past. 



160 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

The evolutionist believes that man has a physical and 
spiritual nature, and that God made him out of inorganic 
matter, or out of the dust of the earth, and that he ascended 
from a lower order. He believes this because he thinks he 
can trace down through the long ages of the past, the pro- 
cess by which the animal man has been gradually formed out 
of a germ indistinguishable from that of other animals, and 
has gradually attained to the perfection of that higher life in 
which we now find him. He thinks he can trace the process 
by which reason is developed out of instinct, and patience 
out of passivity, and sympathy out of the troubles of others, 
and carefulness out of parental instinct, and conscience out 
of approbation, and honesty and honor out of self-interest. 
In short, he believes that development is a divine process as 
firmly as the creationist believes that creation is a divine pro- 
cess, and no less divine because it is gradual. When man 
has attained this higher life, whether it was given at a certain 
period, or a gradual process, it matters very little, he comes 
under the law of the higher life. This law is always of the 
highest authority, whenever in the process of evolution, the 
lower passes into a higher stage of life. 

As man gradually rises out of the animal, in his progres- 
siveness and becomes a man, when he arrives to that place 
in his life to know and understand the moral truth and is 
conscious of it, he comes under the law of the moral life, and 
as soon as he comes to the knowledge of this higher life, he 
comes to know good and evil, right and wrong. 

The violation of this law is sin, and sin is a fall. Then 
according to this process of reasoning, could the first man 
be held responsible for the violation of the moral law, before 
he had arrived at a consciousness of right and wrong, any 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 161 

more than the new-born babe? His powers of reason were 
very deficient, and he had no language to commune with 
anyone, or to express his thoughts on anything he saw 
around him in those primeval forests. Did Adam fall six 
thousand years ago? It is very certain that if we found 
a story of a garden that contained a tree that bore fruit, and 
by eating of that fruit a man made himself immortal and of 
another tree that bore fruit which would give him a a con- 
sciousness of good and evil, with a serpent that talked to him, 
and a God who walked in the garden and was hunting for 
a man, and whom he had placed there, who was trying to 
hide from him — if we found that story in Greek, or Roman, 
or Hindu, we would say that it was a beautiful fable. What 
truth is there in it? And I do not see any reason why, find- 
ing it in Hebrew literature, we should not say that is a 
beautiful fable, what truth is there in that fable? Neither 
the author of Genesis, nor anyone else in the Bible claims 
that the account of creation, as he gives it, was revealed to 
him. There is no reason to think that it was so revealed, 
unless a purely traditional theology constitutes such reason. 
It is now quite generally believed by scholars that Moses 
did not write the book of Genesis. But even if we suppose 
that Genesis was written by him, three or four hundred 
years elapsed between the latest incident in Genesis and the 
time of Moses. It could not possibly have been revealed to 
him, for Assyrian and Babylonian tablets have been dis- 
covered which were in existence from one to three thousand 
years before the time of Moses which contain very similar 
accounts of creation, the fall and deluge. 

For these reasons the modern Bible student who believes 
in what is called progressive and historical revelation, re- 
gards the Book of Genesis as a collection of pre-historical 



162 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

traditions re-written. The Book does not make any preten- 
tions to its scientific accuracy, but its value consists in the 
religious spirit with which these ancient traditions are re- 
written, so as to make them the means of moral and spiritual 
truth. In a sense it is true, scientifically, that God has made 
man out of the dust of the earth, that is out of lower and 
earlier forms, reaching back through various transformations, 
even to the inorganic, and has breathed into him the breath 
of life, that is, in him is a spirit which links him to the Divine. 
But the mechanical conception of this process, which was 
apparently in the mind of the writer of Genesis, is far sur- 
passed in sublimity by the conception of this process enter- 
tained by the modern evolutionist. 

Innocence, temptation, fall, sin — this is the history of 
every man. Man cannot grow from innocence to virtue 
without temptation; he cannot experience temptation with- 
out a possibility of sin — that is, of yielding to temptation, 
and yielding to temptation is fall. Every man when he 
yields to temptation and sin falls from a higher to a lower 
plane, and from the spiritual back toward the animal, from 
which he began to emerge. It is true that the animal man 
is worse in his animalism than the animal from which he has 
emerged. For the ferociousness of man far exceeds that of 
any other animal. How could it be otherwise when the 
higher properties which God has given him are subject to 
and made the instruments of animalism. Every yielding 
temptation is a hindrance, not a help, to moral development, 
but every temptation offers what, rightly employed, is an 
indispensable means of moral development. For all moral 
development is through temptation to virtue. There can be 
no virtue without temptation, for virtue is victory over temp- 
tation, for virtue is the choice of right when wrong presses 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 163 

itself upon us, and demands our choosing. How can we 
have courage, unless there is danger? How can we have 
patience, unless there are burdens to be borne and a desire 
to remove the burdens? How can we have fidelity unless 
there is some trust to be maintained and some temptation 
calling on us to leave the trust and be false? 

Temptation is struggle, and virtue emerges from struggle, 
and we cannot have the choice of right, without the possi- 
bility of doing wrong and wrong doing is sin. The origin 
of sin does not lie in remote history. It does not appear in 
the beginning of the race, or when man first emerged from 
his animal condition. He had to grow and develop and pass 
through many changes during thousands of years before he 
arrived at that consciousness of wrong. His perceptions of 
right and wrong had not developed as long as he was linked 
to the lower, out of which he has emerged, and as the whole 
race was gradually lifted out of that lower plane, every 
individual comes under the divine law, and every violation 
of that law is sin, and every sin is a falling back into the 
animal condition, and the only hope of himself and the only 
hope of the race, is in the power that shall lift him up, and 
out of his lower self, into his higher, truer, and nobler self, 
until he shall be no longer a son of the animal, but in very 
truth a son of God. 

I believe that God is in the world and that he has always 
been inspiring the human race, and always unveiling Him- 
self to earnest human souls, when the human race had 
reached that stage of development in which it was possible 
for God to appear in a human life, and not be grossly and 
hopelessly misunderstood, that He did appear in a human 
life, that He might make perfect that revelation of Himself, 



164 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

which He had been carrying on from the beginning. So 
Christ was sent into the world not as a God, but as a man, 
to show to the world how a man ought to live. A perfectly 
holy man. God in man. 

There has been a controversy between the different 
churches that call themselves Christians, for hundreds of 
years, on the nature of Christ. Some say He is God, some 
say He is not God, some say He is man and some say He is 
not man. Both seem to agree that there is a clear relation- 
ship between God and man; and that He could not be God 
if He were man, nor man if He were God. What a gross 
misunderstanding there exists in the world even yet at this 
enlightened age in regard to Christ's mission. Some worship 
Mary because she is the mother of God, as they say, He is 
the real God. Christ taught that there was only one God. 
He prayed to that God at all times for guidance and help 
in his distresses; that showed his powers were limited, and 
He taught the people that there was a higher power than 
He, but He, and the Father were one in spirit, in guiding 
the race to a higher standard of living and a brotherhood of 
man. 

The fundamental teaching of the Hebrew prophets from 
the beginning is this — that God made man in his own image. 
The difference between God and man is, God is holy and 
man is sinful. God is infinite and man is finite. Conceive 
of God coming into a human life and taking on finite pro- 
portions and he would be perfect man. It is the teaching 
of the Bible, and the way through that the essential nature 
of man, and God are the same. We should conceive of 
Christ, not as a strange, inexplicable God, who was neither 
God nor man, not as a being who went through life doing 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 165 

some things as God and some things as man, but as God in 
man, God so perfectly possessing one unique human soul 
that in that soul we are reflected at once the image of God, 
and the perfection of manhood. 

Christ is God manifest in the flesh — that is, such a mani- 
festation of God as is possible in a human life. A great 
many people seem to think that the object of Christ's com- 
ing into the world was to save man from future punishment, 
from an everlasting hell, where all the wicked were doomed 
to dwell in everlasting torment. But that was not the ob- 
ject in His coming into this world. He came to cleanse and 
purify the world from sin. There is not to be found in 
either the Old Testament or the New, a single text which 
connects sacrifice in the one case, or the suffering and pas- 
sion of Christ in the other with the remission of punishment. 
The word punishment, and the word sacrifice are not to be 
found so collated as to indicate that the sacrifice took the 
place of the penalty. 

There is no way by which life can be quickened save by 
the imparting of life. Struggle for others is as integral a 
part of the doctrine of evolution as struggle for one's self. 
The evolutionist believes in God as the creator of the, world, 
but dwelling in the world, and speaking through all its 
phenomena. That is God's way of doing things. He oper- 
ates in this world through his own unchangeable laws, and 
sin is a violation of God's law, not of some edict issued at 
some remote time in history, but of the law of nature; and 
therefore of the law of God, and therefore of the law of 
man's own being. He believes in inspiration as a universal 
factor in human history coming to its culmination in the lit- 
erature of the Hebrew race. He believes in revelation that 



166 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

is in the unveiling of God, to man, a gradual unveiling 
wrought in human experience, through the seers and proph- 
ets of all ages, but pre-eminently in Christ. He believes in 
incarnation: that is, in the indwelling of God in his chil- 
dren, of which incarnation the type and pattern is seen in 
Him who is at once the manifestation of God to man, and 
the revelation to men of what humanity is to be when God's 
work in the world is done, perfect God and perfect man, 
because of God perfectly dwelling in perfect man. 

He believes in atonement, that is, in a true reconciliation 
between God and man, making them atone through the in- 
carnation and passion of Jesus Christ, who lived and suffered 
not to relieve men from future torment, but to purify and 
perfect them in God's likeness by uniting them to God. 

He believes in sacrifice, not as a penalty borne by an 
innocent sufferer for guilty man, a doctrine for which we 
can find no authority, either in scripture or in life — but as a 
laying down of one's life in love, that another may receive 
life. 

He believes in redemption, not as a restoration to a lost 
state of innocence, impossible to be restored, but as a cul- 
mination of the long process when man shall be presented 
before his Father without spot or blemish 

He believes, not in propitiation of an angry God by an- 
other suffering to appeasej the Father's wrath? Whose 
mercy, going forth to redeem from sin, satisfies, as nothing 
else could the divine indignation against sin, not as a mere 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 167 

endless existence, but as an undying nature, which is su- 
perior to death, because it shares with God, its Redeemer, 
the power of an endless life. 

And he believes in religion, not as a creed, a ritual, or a 
church order, which are at best but the instruments of re- 
ligion, but as self-control, righteousness, reverence, hope, 
love, the life of God in the soul of man. 



168 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 



Chapter XI 
Does God Send Trouble? 

WE OF this age are hindered by the tradition of 
the past, from receiving a full recognition of the 
nature, and meaning, of a great deal of Scripture. 
They have been handed down to us by our ancestors, and 
so interwoven in our religious ideas, and social concepts, that 
we never think of questioning the conceptions we have in- 
herited. It seems most wonderful that these traditions, com- 
ing down to us through the ages, should still continue to be 
so indelibly fixed in the minds of most Christian people at 
the present time. 

Even now, in this age of learning, when so many are de- 
siring to know the truth, with all of our helps and books by 
learned men, so every one may attain to a more correct and 
better understanding of what the Scriptures teach, not one in 
a hundred is able to discern the true conception of the author 
of many portions of Scripture. We find everywhere the 
remnants of primitive religions which have crept into the 
most orthodox of our beliefs, turning its blessings into curses, 
and its light into darkness. Thereby, laying a burden upon 
human life, hope and fear in ways more grievous than those 
of pagan times. But we hope now to pass beyond those 
limits that past generations have laid down, and expect to 
attain to other and higher conceptions of truth, which time 
will bring to those of the hereafter who shall more fully 
share in the truer and wider views. I do not suppose that 
this changed state of mind can be attained by mere know- 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 169 

ledge, or even by the blind acceptance of the teachers' 
statements, or even by the fullest learning. If won at all, 
is at the price of much reflection on the results of action 
that have served to bring the individual of our time, from the 
deep seated impressions of an infinite succession of paternal 
teaching, from the lowest of the dark ages, to the passing 
stage to which we have attained. 

Those who have been so fortunate as to have been reared 
in a true Christian faith can have no sufficient idea of the 
torture to which the minds of men have been subjected by 
the old fashioned discourses on the punishments that after 
death assail all save a few chosen ones. The human fancy 
has ranged far, but nowhere else has it gathered such a har- 
vest as in the sulphurous realms. Cruelty is a natural mo- 
tive of men, it came with the vast store of good and bad, 
that was sent to us from the lower stages of life. All the 
better influences of society worked against it. The teach- 
ings of Christ should have banished it from the earth, but 
for nearly two thousand years these teachings have been 
made in appearance to justify the endless pictures of tor- 
ment upon the immortal bodies of those He sought to save. 

I recall the preachings of a worthy man, famous in my 
boyhood as a great exhorter. I can see and hear him even 
now rolling out his stories of the torments of the doomed, 
with a drone of sorrow in his voice, but with an evident relish 
for its cruelty that he painted amazingly well. Men and 
women fell down in fear and horror before that terror he 
forced upon them, the terror of what Death may open to 
men. For centuries a host of able men have been at work 
perpetuating these brutal ideas throughout the civilized 
world. Can we wonder that, with this endless dwelling 



170 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

on the ancient conceptions of the brute and primitive man, 
cruelty and fear which Christianity should have cleared 
away, cling to men? That all altruistic motives which nat- 
urally lead them to put aside all personal considerations of 
their fate, should still have so small a part in their actions. 
One of the best things that can be said of the century that 
has just passed, is, that it has seen the end, or at least the 
promise of the end, of that old conception of Hell. The 
physical Hell, the personal devil, his imps of all degrees, 
and fiery furnaces, and all the other agents of torment, are 
passing away from the imaginations of men. There is prob- 
ably not an educated clergyman who believes in them; 
there is scarcely an intelligent congregation, where the 
preaching that was demanded fifty years ago, would be 
tolerated today. 

The idea of suffering for evil done is still firmly rooted 
in the minds of all men of sound moral nature, suffering in 
this, or any other world, until it has accomplished its work, 
but the old conception is now being purged from our re- 
ligion, which it has so long disgraced. 

Out of a desire, no doubt, to get people to believe that 
God overruled everything in this world, and to see in some 
way His will dominant, in all the events of life, a wonder- 
ful perversion of God's real relation to human suffering, 
sickness and death, has spread over the world, bringing its 
trail of gloom, over the minds of men, unjustly attributing 
all the evils that exist in our time, and all past time, to the 
direct dealings of God with his creatures. From Him we 
have been taught, come all those visitations of wrath that 
lurk in the darkness; the violent destruction that sweeps 
over us at noonday; the frightful destruction of life in the 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 171 

railway crash; the financial calamity that robs a man of all 
he possesses ; the terrible disease that takes hold of a man's 
lungs and wears him away to his untimely grave ; the fever 
that attacks the lovely child, and tortures its sweet life away, 
great earthquakes, and eruptions that have overtaken and 
destroyed so many cities, with all their inhabitants, and the 
tidal waves that have rolled in upon the land from the ocean 
depths, flooding vast areas of fertile valleys, containing 
many cities filled with people, bringing death and destruc- 
tion to all. 

Such have been some of the religious teachings in our time, 
used as demonstrations of the fact, that it is God who has 
done these things ; that it is God that has brought the strong 
men to a premature grave; that it is God who has taken the 
life away from the beautiful child. I heard a Christian 
mother say after she had lost her only boy, "I cannot un- 
derstand why God took him away. I never can serve a 
God who could willfully destroy my child." If I believed 
that God spread disease, sickness, and death, and takes 
away the lives of little children ; if I believed that God de- 
stroys the lives of so many young wives and mothers; if I 
believed that God was responsible for the death of so many 
young men and women that fill premature graves, I too 
would refuse to serve Him. What impulse would we have 
to desire His consolation? Mankind is beginning to have 
a better conception of God's ruling, instead of looking at 
Him as an enemy of mankind, he has been led to believe 
that all things in the universe are reasonable, and that hu- 
man life in its best achievement, in its best capacity, and in 
its moral need, is of permanent concern to the Most High. 



172 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

He believes that he has been transcended over to the divine 
side, and that he has heard the verdict of the infinite in favor 
of man. 

It is time we should learn that death in all organic and 
inorganic beings, is only the outcome of natural laws, the 
effect of natural causes. There is nothing permanent in 
the world; there is constant change going on in every part 
of the physical realm. The small part of inorganic matter 
taken from the earth, which for a moment, as it were, 
has come into the organic state ; is but a temporary manifes- 
tation of the life of the universe, which only abides for a 
season and while it does exist, is constantly taking on new 
matter and new functions with each change to which it is 
subjected. The chemical process of building up all or- 
ganic life has one mode of action. As long as this process 
continues in a normal condition, the functions of all the or- 
gans of the body will continue in active operation, until the 
time fixed by natural law, when all activities are suspended, 
and the organic returns to inorganic. Such is the fixed and 
unalterable round of chemical change and decay, through- 
out the whole universe. It is God's plan and we may re- 
gard it as essential and profitable to the best interest of life 
in general. 

It is not possible to see how advance could so well be 
made without removing all the ancient and defective indi- 
viduals from the earth by some process. It is in every way 
far better that they should quietly give place to their suc- 
cessors, who are better fitted to do their work. It is only by 
this process that the human family could be made to develop 
from a lower to a higher plane of moral and intellectual at- 
tainment. Apparently the supreme being always works by 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 173 

law, and never apart from it. All the best of men do so, 
and if you should find them falling away, you would cer- 
tainly regard it as a weakness on their part. They go on 
broad principles of conduct. The stronger the men the 
purer their principles, the higher their mental and moral 
status, the more confident you feel that whatever they do 
will be in accordance with those principles. Now, if we 
carry our thoughts upward, to think of supreme strength, 
supreme mental and moral status, it becomes, of course, im- 
possible to think of action apart from principle. 

It may appear to many persons that the evident decline of 
interest in the world to come, is a falling from grace which 
our fathers possessed, that it is a departure from those ideas, 
which caused them to look beyond this life of trial and temp- 
tation to a happier home in an upper realm. But at a closer 
examination into the real motives and principles of most men 
in this age of scientific investigation, we find they are more 
deeply concerned in the conditions that make for a devotion 
to the interests of life in this beautiful world, and not so 
much given to the consideration of those anticipations which 
may come to us after our labors on earth are ended. We 
also find that this idea that there are two realms, one of 
the flesh, and of the devil, and the other of celestial purity, 
is no part of the doctrine of the great Teacher, but it is the 
relic of a more ancient belief in the power of evil spirits in 
the material universe. Science is casting out those devils, 
giving the world to man in all its beauty and perfect friend- 
liness, and giving him a clearer conception of his place in 
nature, and a recognition of his kinship to God. 

It should not be supposed that the effect of the change in 
the conception of life which science has brought about has 



174 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

diminished in any way the sense of duty to the present, or 
the future. This motive is perhaps stronger than it has ever 
been before. Men are beginning to feel that the universe is 
their own, that they dwell in their Father's house, and that 
they remain it, whatever may befall them at death. To 
the man of old the assurance of a happy immortality had 
the blessed effect that it relieved him of the fear that he 
might fall a prey to demons. Now that he believes that his 
danger is from himself alone, the assurance has less value 
to him, if he is conscious of doing his duty as well as he can. 
Any processes of life hereafter will naturally appear no 
more interesting than his earthly conditions years hence. So 
we may judge that the present concern of our people in the 
present, and its deeds to the exclusion of the old interest in 
a life to come, is not undutiful; it means a better sense of 
the conditions and relations of those that are living. 

It is clear to all who have investigated the matter, that the 
old doctrine that this is an evil world, full of evil spirits 
ever ready to drag men down to perdition, is undergoing a 
rapid change. The cause that has led men to this new con- 
ception, is to be found in the conviction that this world is not 
evil; that God made it good and pronounced it so, and 
that it is not parted from whatever else the universe may 
contain as evil from good, and that man has not been cast 
down from a higher estate, but has been led up through the 
ages, through inconceivable stages of being to his noble 
station of intellectual endowment and understanding. This 
and all else which we have attained, has brought about a 
marvelous reconciliation with the world of the creature so 
long parted from it. In a large measure man's ancient Fear 
has gone with the ancient ignorance which aroused it. There 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 175 

is no longer the apparent need of a refuge in a realm of an- 
other kind from that in which he is born, where he might 
be safe from Satan in the protection of the Lord. 

Fortunately those centuries of dreaded torment are be- 
ing delegated to the past. With the opening of the twen- 
tieth cenury, men may as Christians see the dawning of a 
brighter ray of hope, and behold in the future an existence, 
filled with deeper joy, for they see further into the depths of 
God's operations in the universe. Looking forward to the 
path on which men are so rapidly advancing, we can discern 
to some extent, the state to which he is to attain when his 
reconciliation with the nature about him is more completely 
effected. We can see that the meaning of man's organic 
history will demonstrate to him the realities of life unknown 
to the nations of old. He is to see himself as far more truly 
divine in origin, than the old ideas of his creation led him 
to believe. He will see that his life is, by way of the gen- 
erations inconceivably enduring, that his individuality in one 
sense but a momentary manifestation of the life of the kind, 
v absolute and inseparable with all created things in the 
universe. When men came to know this truth in its fulness 
we may expect to see a deeper devotion to the cause of bet- 
terment, which was impossible under the old conviction, that 
the world was evil, and that the only cure for it was its 
destruction. It is only now that it has become possible to 
lay that ancient intuition beside a perfectly new theory of 
creation, and to see whether the two can be made to har- 
monize. I take the theory at the hands of the most trust- 
worthy science of the day, and lay it against that hoary old 
belief about evil and Satan, and say, "If the evolutionary 
theory of creation is true, we have a probable solution of 



176 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

the whole enigma, and one which is full of encouragement, 
full of hope, and which leaves the character of the Creator 
in all its radiant beneficence. Evil must take its course in 
this world. The sacred cause of freedom is well able to 
run the risk, and in the end love shall triumph. To our 
limited view the end seems long in coming, but even now 
the beneficent force on which the Creator is confidently 
relying to quell rebellion, to put down anarchy, and conquer 
death itself, is making a heaven on earth in many a dreary 
corner of life where all seemed dark and hopeless. Even 
now, love is the light of the world, and wherever it rules a 
human life, the worst of trials are joyfully endured for the 
sake of it. 

It shines in the faces of childhood; it sweetens the sor- 
rows of age; it beams down from the midnight stars; it 
flashes on every crested wave, and glows in every flower. 
It thrills in the song of birds; and sings in the babbling 
brook. It gives strength to duty and inspiration to heroism. 
It triumphs over anguish and death itself, and, make what 
you will of Calvary, have what theory about it you please, 
the one thing about it upon which we are all agreed is, that 
high over the sad world it shines out radiant with the very 
divinity of love. It is that radiance that alone can dispel 
the gloom of life, and it is the attractive power of it, that 
alone can regenerate the earth, and restore the harmony of 
mankind. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 177 



Chapter XII 
Christ's Attitude 

JESUS said He came not to destroy the law, but to ful- 
fill it. He never arrayed Himself in open hostility to 
the Jewish law, nor the traditions, in fact He cared 
very little about what they believed. It was not His mission to 
antagonize their false notions of what they thought the 
teachings of the fathers were. It was evident to Him that 
they had very erroneous opinions in regard to the teaching of 
the law, and its intended spiritual application. They had 
added so many gross perversions to their traditions, and to 
the whole of their scriptures, that their conceptions of God 
and His requirements, were very much distorted. The Jews 
tenaciously held to the belief that every event that occurred 
came immediately from God, or His adversary, and that 
everything that befell a man, reflected the disposition of 
God's mind toward him. Calamity indicated anger, and 
prosperity the favor of God. They believed in evil spirits 
and Satanic possessions, that possessed men who had super- 
natural power, and no one but God alone could drive him 
away. They believed in witchcraft, sorcery, and divination, 
the practice of which was such a formidable barrier to the 
teaching of Christ and His apostles. The divines did a 
lucrative business among those superstitious people who 
had such crude ideas of God. What was more tempting, 
than the wish to know beforehand what the future was to 
bring forth ; what a willing ear those who cherished this wish, 
would lend to men who came to them and said, "By the 
kindness of God we are able to communicate to you the 



178 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

knowledge you desire." All these things and more, ad- 
dressed themselves to the secular mind, in such a way that 
it worked steadily toward a complete enslavement of the 
people. 

When Christ came He took these people as He found 
them, with all their false teachings, and taught them that 
these things should give place to something higher, and that 
il was God's chief desire, that His will be done and that 
His kingdom might come, and that His religion was capable 
of lifting men into a higher and purer world of religious 
thought and moral aspirations. 

If Christ in beginning His ministry had antagonized their 
belief in tradition, and tried to convince them that the whole 
system was wrong and false, what weary centuries of fruit- 
less effort and disappointed hopes would have followed 
before the establishing of the kingdom would have been 
consummated. Perhaps the results that were attained could 
never have been reached. 

It is evident that Christ had a true insight and vision of 
all material things, as well as spiritual discernment. He pre- 
sented His truths in a reasonable way, and in a style best 
adapted to the understanding and intelligence of His hear- 
ers; to make the most lasting impressions, and He also used 
terms and illustrations with which they were familiar. He 
did not go into ecstatic visions and raptures like the writers 
and teachers of old, blending together so many contradictory 
statements, and astonishing intellectual mistakes, and imper- 
fect appreciation of facts. He said, "Come, let us reason 
together." His was a reasonable service. He tried to get 
His people away from the tradition of the past, and from the 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 179 

false conceptions they had received from their false teachers, 
and to accept His religion, as being the only true and re- 
vealed conceptions of the moral principles, that will lead 
men to a higher and better life. Their old perverted no- 
tions and prejudices that they are clinging to are relegated 
to the things of the past, and all things have become new. 
Love to God should be their supreme delight, as He has 
manifested that love to them. But there were very few in 
that day that were willing to accept the new doctrine that 
he taught, and leave the old. Such has ever been the ten- 
dency of all peoples in all ages of the world's history; be- 
liefs in any form of religion that have been long established, 
whether true or false, are only changed through the course 
of ages. 

From the whole body of religious thought which the 
Jewish people had worked out in the long course of its re- 
ligious experience up to the time of Christ, Jesus selected 
that part which was independent of the traditions of the 
past, and the Jewish religious conceptions as a nation. He 
said little or nothing of the Jewish code. He accepted it 
as a fact, not attempting to either abolish or even change one 
iota, but throwing into its midst a body of spiritual religious 
truth which was independent of all codes, and which, if ac- 
cepted and acted on, would annul the evil of the former 
code. Thus in one sense, his scheme of life was derived 
from the law, in so far as it accepted the Mosaic law, as 
the rule of faith and practice. But on the other hand the 
exclusive prominence which He gave to spiritual doctrine 
might be relied on, if it were sincerely accepted to establish 
a new method of moral religious life. 



18 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

The difficulty was that men would be slow to accept it, 
so much are men creatures of routine, so much under the 
domination of prescribed rule, and long established custom, 
of outward ceremonies, that it is always to be feared that 
the outward will repress the inward. Spiritual truth is dimmed 
and enfeebled by the presence of a great mass of prescrip- 
tions. There is indeed no perfect escape from this danger. 
Whatever the purity and force of the spiritual truth which 
is committed to men, they will always do what they can to 
enclose it in a framework of unspiritual dogma, and in the 
conflict between the spiritual and the unspiritual, human 
weakness always gives the advantage to the latter. The 
history of Christianity abounds in illustrations of this ten- 
dency. The church has at various times built up a struc- 
ture of beliefs and practices, which have involved it in de- 
structive controversies, which may fairly be compared with 
the traditional law of the Jews. Even in the first century, 
within two generations after the death of the Master, the 
church had received a great many erroneous conceptions into 
its organization. 

We are not to regard the transition from Judaism to his- 
torical Christianity as the substitution of a perfect, for an 
imperfect form of religion, but as an advance from an im- 
perfect to a less imperfect form, to one which permitted that 
moral-spiritual truth which is the germ of all religions to 
assert itself with greater freedom, and exert its true influence 
more completely. For the Jewish scheme of obedience to a 
mass of precepts, Paul substituted faith in Jesus as Re- 
deemer, a vastly higher and freer conception. Yet even 
this, especially in connecting this thought with other views, 
speedily became characterized by slavish and unthinking 
obedience to a ritual. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 181 

Christianity was a Jewish development; but it was much 
more. The conception of the earthly kingdom of God as a 
human organization, was, as we have seen, almost peculiar 
to the Jews. Elsewhere it is found only in germinal form, 
but its essentials are universal. It means the due recogni- 
tion of all the factors and relations of life, human and divine, 
the highest rennement of ethical and religious feeling and 
action. It must include the best thought of the ages, and 
can come truly into existence only by the co-operation of 
all peoples and races. It is not exclusively Jewish or Greek 
or Roman, but more than all this. The ultimate aim of the 
world's life is the fusion of its highest ideas into a harmon- 
ious practical unity, and it is the great merit of Christianity 
to have taken a decided step in the preparation for this end. 
In the first century, already the church showed an inter- 
mingling of Jewish and Greek conceptions, both ethical and 
religious. But the Jewish thought had already been in- 
fluenced by the Persian thought. In the divine there was 
majesty, justice, and love, in the human there was the 
recognition of the supremacy of conscience, and the power 
of sympathy and sweetness. This was in itself a great 
advance, it was the partial fusion of two great masses of 
human thought. The service that Christianity did was to 
strip religion of the idea that Christianity was intended only 
for the Jews, and that the Supreme Being possessed a human 
form and attributes, and is swayed by human passion, and 
also giving such elements that all the Western world might 
in a substantial way unite in working out the truly religious 
life. 

With the rise of the Roman Empire, the Old World of 
the East had become isolated and dead; its influence was 



182 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

done away with — not completely and absolutely, but so 
substantially as to mark an epoch in human history. There 
still remained a few localities where they held to the con- 
ception of a Deity under a human form, and possessing 
human passions, and attributes, and that animals had mental 
faculties of the same nature as those of man, the removal 
of which conception was to be left to the slow moving moral 
forces of society, but the path was marked out, and the 
greatest obstacles taken out of the way. Political unity 
had been achieved, but complete harmony was impossible, 
without religious oneness. Christianity offered what all 
could accept. By furnishing a practical bond between na- 
tionalities it effected what the Hellenic and Roman re- 
ligions had proved themselves unable to effect. It was the 
fruit of a noble and powerful effort to collect all the works 
and doctrines, and choosing at will and combining all the 
truths into one system, which was accomplished in the sec- 
ond century by the wisest and most lofty spiritual thinkers of 
that day. These conceptions had their roots in the far past, 
but its special impress came from Jesus of Nazareth. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 183 



Chapter XIII 
Miracles 

IF THERE is one thing more than another that this 
age has learned it is that in this universe everything is 
governed by law. Law runs through all things. Mighty 
cosmic forces keep the vast whole together, from the stars 
in the solemn order of their ceaseless march, to the leaves, 
which cannot fall to the ground except as law constrains 
them. Every grain of sand is under law and so is every 
lightning flash. It is by law that every drop of moisture 
sinks into the soil, and every flower blossoms in the spring- 
time. The ground is everywhere preoccupied by these per- 
sistent habits of the Deity, and cause and effect are so inti- 
mately linked together that the smallest movement of the 
forces of the universe is a link in a chain stretching back 
into a past eternity. Thus the shining of this morning's sun, 
the gathering of mist from around the mountain top, the eddy 
of the wind gust that drives it across the plain, these and a 
thousand other things that help to make a summer's har- 
vest, are as much a fixed part of the order of nature as the 
mountain peak is a fixed part of the earth's surface. 

What then does it mean to ask God to interfere in the 
established order of the universe, or what does it mean to 
change the current of the wind, or squeeze one drop of 
rain out of a reluctant sky? It means that God shall sub- 
stitute for this universe a chance world, dependent upon the 
whims and fancies of men that are ignorant of the laws that 
govern the universe. It means that the sun may rise or not, 



184 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

that it may appear at any time or place, or that the moon 
may come out instead in answer to the wishes of men. It 
means that gravitation and everything else shall be changed. 
It means that cause and effect shall be abolished, and that 
law shall be annihilated. The question then naturally 
arises, What are Miracles? Webster defines them to be 
events, or effects contrary to the established constitution 
and course of things, a deviation from the known laws of 
nature, implying a suspension of these, a divine interposition. 
All peoples in ancient times were fully imbued with the idea 
that God was continually doing things out of the ordinary, 
and a great many stories were in circulation concerning the 
wonderful things that God had done in the past; but, ac- 
cording to our present knowledge of events, these are not 
historical facts, but are only folklore tales and belong to the 
realm of myths. 

Many of the most noteworthy events related in the Old 
Testament have their counterpart in widespread legends. 
Such as the stories of the Creation, Fall and the Deluge, 
are legends well known, also the story of the Tower of 
Babel, the trial of Abraham's faith, Jacob's vision of the 
ladder between earth and heaven, the finding of Moses in an 
ark, the transformation of Moses's rod into a serpent, the 
Israelites' passage through the Red Sea on dry land, Moses 
smiting the rock and thus producing water, the reception 
by Moses of the Ten Commandments from the hand of 
God, Balaam talking with the ass, Joshua's command to 
the sun and the sun's obedience, Samson and his exploits, 
Elijah's ascent to heaven, and Jonah's sojourn for three 
days and three nights in the belly of a fish. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 185 

It is to such stories as these, and many more in the Old 
and New Testament, that our attention will be directed in 
this chapter. We must remember the fact that the book of 
Genesis is a composite narrative based on older records 
long since lost. It appears to have been compiled in the 
seventh century B. C, and to have been added to later. 
The story of the Deluge is a Hebrew version of the Baby- 
lonian poem. The book of Exodus, too, is another com- 
posite legend which has long been mistaken for history, but 
the examination of Egyptian history gives no warrant for 
supposing that the signs, and wonders wrought by Moses, 
ever occurred, that the first born of the Israelites were ever 
slain, or that Pharaoh was ever drowned in the Red Sea. 

Professor Huxley once made the following remark: "The 
miracles of the Church are child's play to the miracles I see 
in nature." This has been hailed by the defenders of the 
faith as a satisfactory admission that science concedes the 
possibility of miracles. It is continually being quoted in 
apologetic works and from the pulpit, and is apparently 
considered as a conclusive piece of evidence, that science has 
nothing to say against miracles. But, Professor Huxley 
went on to explain, on the strength of an undeniable im- 
probability, however, we not only have a right to demand, 
but are morally bound to require, strong evidence in favor 
of a miracle before we even take it into serious consideration. 
But when, instead of such evidence, nothing is produced 
but stories originating nobody knows how or when, among 
persons who could firmly believe in devils which enter pigs, 
I confess that my feeling is one of astonishment that anyone 
should expect a reasonable man to take such testimony ser- 
iously. Professor Huxley would not have been thus mis- 



186 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

understood if he had spoken of the wonders of nature, and 
had not used a word popularly understood to signify that 
break in nature's laws which it has yet to be proved has ever 
occurred, or can ever occur. 

The wonders of nature take place in accordance with 
natural laws; miracles do not. Why do we no longer have 
miracles. The natural answer of course would be, as soon as 
nature's laws were better understood, a more trustworthy 
evidence was demanded by men of science and those who 
knew more about the laws by which this world is governed. 

Assuming that a miracle reveals the presence of a super- 
natural power, why should its repetition destroy its miracu- 
lous character. If miracles are intended to convert the 
stiff-necked and hard of heart, what more likely way of 
bringing them to submission than the repetition of miracles. 
And, according to Scripture, this was precisely the way in 
which Pharaoh, king of Egypt, was humbled. He resisted 
the miracles wrought by Moses and Aaron with stubborn- 
ness all through the first nine plagues; but the universal 
slaying of the first born broke even his proud spirit. It may 
suit some to say that the repetition of miracles would destroy 
their use; but there is many a preacher who wishes at times 
from the depth of his heart that an authentic miracle could 
be produced. And yet it is at this momentous crisis in the 
religious affairs of the world when so many nations of 
Europe are engaged in such sanguine struggles for suprem- 
acy, and each claiming to be fighting for the betterment of 
man, and on the side of righteousness, and that God is on 
their side ; and when the enemy is carrying one position after 
another, and yet in no case has God manifested his approval 
or disapproval, by any sign or miracle to these contending 
powers. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 187 

Day and night the bloody conflict rages. Hideous night, 
pierced with flame, filled with rockets' gleaming train, weird 
with bursting bombs that light the glistening fields every 
night; awful night, shaken by the booming guns, blotched 
with the red of splitting shells, quivering insanely in their 
dug out cells, steady beat, night of death, with the wounded 
turning white, waiting for the hours of light, comrades 
spared carry back the dead from the fields soaked in red; 
mad night, rushing to and fro; hellish night, shown by the 
rocket's glow. 

It is inconceivable to me that Deity, knowing all things, 
fully comprehending the rights and wrongs that brought on 
this dreadful slaughter of his children, bringing waste and 
desolation, and indescribable misery to myriads of homes, 
would certainly arouse an angry God to perform some 
miracle that would awaken these warring nations to a reali- 
zation of the hideousness of the manner in which they are 
endeavoring to kill and destroy their enemies in every con- 
ceivable way, regardless of combatants, or non-combatants, 
old and young, women and children alike. 

Does God care? Is He interested in human affairs? 
Does He hear the prayers of millions of His followers as- 
cending up to His throne from all parts of the world? I 
am firmly convinced that all these great campaigns are 
planned and executed by the indomitable will of man. The 
biggest guns, and the strongest army led by the best general, 
decides the final outcome regardless of any other power 
outside his own brain. Man alone is supreme in all the af- 
fairs of this world. God is not a man ; He is not a person. 
Some think that God rules this world alone. But this su- 
preme energy in which we bathe and of which we are a part, 



188 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

we call for lack of a better term, God. But outside this 
supreme energy, I cannot imagine of anything. I regard 
this energy, or first principle as a whole, and its highest 
manifestation finds itself in this phenomenon we call man. 

When no one doubted the possibility of the frequency of 
miracles they abounded ; when by reason of their 'number 
and the ready willingness to believe them, their effect was 
very astonishing, so they were frequently made use of to im- 
pose on a believing world. Now, when they are denied and 
looked upon as the invention of a barbarous age, when the 
faith they might support is in such danger as it never was 
before, when a small part of the wonders wasted in the 
deserts of Sinai and the country beyond Jordan, would 
shake the nations with astonishment and surprise — when in 
fact, the least exhibition of a genuine miracle would produce 
wonderful results, then miracles somehow cease to exist. 

Let us consider some examples of the latest interpreta- 
tions, and see if they appeal to our minds. We read in John 
5th chapter, that the stirring of the waters and the conse- 
quent healing virtue was attributed to the presence of an 
angel. The modern man would speak of the pool as a med- 
icinal spring. The ancients knew nothing of what are called 
natural causes. The explanation is sensible enough; but 
it shows that the writer was just as ignorant as other people 
of their times, in regard to the explanation of the healing 
properties of these waters. How is it now that the water 
has lost its healing qualities? 

Opinions differ widely as to whether certain miracles 
actually occurred, or whether they admit of a natural ex- 
planation. Take the miracle of the feeding of the five 
thousand. A great many theologians and others think what 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 18 » 

is related actually occurred, while a twentieth century ob- 
server would have given us, if he had been there, a very 
different account of what actually happened, from that 
which has come down to us. 

Passing on to the miracles of the Old Testament, we often 
find that those who still maintain that only the first chapers 
of the Bible are legendary will adopt a variation of the sec- 
ond class of interpretation, they will say that the events were 
of an ordinary character, but occurred in answer to prayer. 
Joshua 10:12-14 should not be taken literally, but allow- 
ance should be made for poetical license, but expositors ex- 
plain that he never really committed himself to the extent 
of commanding the sun and the moon to stand still, but only 
besought God that the black clouds of the storm driving up 
the pass from the sea might not be allowed to blot out the 
sun and bring night prematurely before his victory was com- 
plete. This prayer, be it remembered, was for the sake of 
a work of butchery which God was supposed to have 
sanctioned. Besides, as the sun is said to have obeyed 
Joshua, and further it is said that there was no day like 
that before it, or after it, at least, we are to infer that some- 
thing very unusual happened at Joshua's request. The ex- 
planation we often meet with by some is that the language 
used is purely figurative, just as one might say: "I hope the 
sun won't set too soon," or "We never had such a day." 
One thing we do know, that it would be utterly impossible 
for the sun to stand still, or in other words, for the Earth to 
stop revolving. 

Perhaps the most unsatisfactory explanation of all is that 
regarding the rainbow. It is explained by some preachers 
that it is not meant that the rainbow appeared for the first 



190 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

time to Noah after the flood (although this is certainly what 
the Bible leads one to suppose) but that it was adopted then 
as a visible sign of God's covenant, as water is adopted for 
a somewhat similar covenant in the New Testament. It is 
now known for a fact, that, if there are any historical data 
for the story, the flood could only have been local, like many 
of the floods that have taken place in all parts of the earth, 
but let that pass. Has the rainbow-covenant prevented 
millions of people from perishing since then in a mighty 
flood? Looking at God's promise as a token of His pity for 
suffering humanity, are not deaths occurring every moment, 
eccompanied by agony so prolonged and supreme that com- 
pared with them, a death of drowning would be a happy 
release? If Jews and Christians still believe in this story, 
how is it that the rainbow attracts not the slightest devout 
attention? I have never yet heard this beautiful spectacle 
alluded to with any particular reverence. The reason is 
obvious. We know that the bow consists of all the pris- 
matic colors produced in the atmosphere by the refraction 
and reflection of the sun's light from the rain drops, and no 
one regards the Bible story seriously. Yet our divines try 
to save the credit of the Bible by interpretations which are 
obviously catching at straws. Such methods are as harm- 
ful as they are pitiful. To what extent will not bias influ- 
ence the brain to use its powers perversely. 

It is far fetched arguments of this kind that increase 
rather than dispel doubt in the normal mind, and especially 
when they are brought forward in all seriousness by the very 
pillars of the church. We are sometimes asked to banish 
our doubts and craving for intellectualism, as it is called, 
and to come to Christ as little children and in Him to find 
rest. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 191 

Certainly it is only by letting our minds sink to the level 
of a little child's, or what is the same thing, to the level of 
a primeval man, that we could bring ourselves to accept 
such childish nonsense. This unconscious trifling with the 
truth — for in reality it is nothing else — reminds me of a 
passage in Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, where an 
attempt is made to reconcile the Mosaic account of creation 
with the discoveries of modern science. It runs as follows: 

The very act of creation must have been the introducing 
of laws; but when the work was finished, those laws may 
have suffered some modification. Miracles are rejected not 
because they are amazing, but because they are contra- 
dictory to experience and at variance with the laws of 
nature. So far the scientist considers the reign of law to 
be an established scientific fact, and he is naturally loath to 
conclude, without the strongest evidence, that after all he has 
been deceived. Much less would he come to such a con- 
clusion when there is not a particle of trustworthy evidence. 
There is the significant circumstance, too, that the laws now 
discovered were unknown at the time of the alleged per- 
formance of miracles, and that the belief in miracles, and 
in the supposed continuance of miracles, varies in inverse 
proportion to knowledge. In regard to the Resurrection, 
advanced modem criticism shows that it cannot be regarded 
as a historical fact. The evidence is considered, after 
sober investigation, as being unreliable. This is the opinion 
cf professors of theology formed on the results of the most 
careful research, and with no preconceived opinion as to its 
scientific impossibility. While the obvious discrepancies 
and deficiencies in the accounts of the Resurrection are left 
practically unexplained, the old argument from the empty 
tomb, is being discarded as worthless by the best scholars. 



192 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

Again the new science of psychology robs the appear- 
ances, supposing that they ever occurred, of any meaning 
that could be construed into a proof of the resurrection. The 
argument used by the apologists that is of any account is 
based on the letters of St. Paul, and on these more than 
anything else is the foundation of their faith. Paul, a con- 
temporary of Christ, wrote some letters in which he shows a 
firm belief in the resurrection, the evidence of this one man 
is considered sufficient to substantiate a miracle, which is 
contrary to all human experience, and upon the truth of 
which depend the Christian Faith and our hope of immor- 
tality. 

Nothwithstanding, Paul was not present himself at any 
of the occasions of the alleged appearances ; and except with 
regard to his own particular experience, his evidence is, 
therefore, all hearsay. The statement that Jesus was seen, 
by five hundred brethren at one time is of little value, and 
Paul omits to mention what steps he took to ascertain the 
accuracy of his information — who the individuals were, 
what the various impressions made upon them were, etc. 
The appearance to five hundred brethren is not mentioned 
in any of the Gospels. That Paul heard such a report does 
not prove that the report was true, or if true, that the five 
hundred had clear and unmistakable evidence of Christ's 
presence. 

The fact of St. Paul's having been a contemporary of the 
Messiah, seems to me only to add to our perplexities. When 
there were so many who were eye witnesses to His life, why 
should God single out one who was not thus favored, as His 
chief witness for all posterity? He was living at the same 
time and in the same country as Christ, and yet never knew 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 193 

Him. Surely it stands to reason that an eye witness is of 
more value than a visionary who wrote letters revealing a 
remarkable ignorance of the greater part of the narrative 
of the Gospels, and indeed of the whole body of teachings 
there ascribed to Jesus. That St. Paul would believe in the 
Resurrection before he took up the Christian cause goes 
without saying for all Pharisees believed it, but that he 
believed everything he heard from the followers of Christ, 
and everything he thought he heard when in a trance, does 
not, I fear, amount to much in the way of evidence — and 
especially so when we know that this was an age when 
the resurrection of any great prophet was taken to be a 
common event. 

How often in the world's history have the disciples of 
great teachers attributed miraculous powers to their beloved 
Master, even when with them, alive, and still further mag- 
nified these powers after his death? How often has it 
occurred that these same stories about the founders of other 
religions have been exaggerated in the course of their trans- 
mission to succeeding generations? Nothing is more con- 
ceivable than that the Bible stories may spuriously embellish 
the real life of Jesus as much as the mythical accounts of 
Buddha. Of all Old World legends, the death and resur- 
rection of a virgin born, or in some way divinely born Savior 
was the most widespread. Saul, the Pharisee, would have 
been imbued with this prevalent notion, and so could never, 
never get away from the thought that some kind of propitia- 
tion had to be made for the sins of men. 

There remains the miracle of the virgin-birth. That this 
is under dispute among Christians and theologians, is no- 
torious, and the controversy has but served to show with 



194 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

ever increasing clearness how untrustworthy is the evidence 
for this miracle. Christian Bible experts inform us that it 
belongs to the latest addition to the New Testament tra- 
dition, and that no trace of the story can be found before 
1 20 A.D. In other words, that it is an obvious interpolation 
in Matthew and Luke. Harnck, the learned professor of 
Church History in the University of Berlin, is looked upon, 
even by the orthodox, as one of our greatest Bible scholars, 
and we learn from him that we must disregard the history 
of Jesus's birth given in these two gospels, for not only is it 
untrustworthy, but the evangelists themselves never refer 
to it, nor make Jesus Himself refer to his antecedents. On 
the contrary, they tell us that Jesus's mother and His breth- 
ren were completely surprised at His coming forward, and 
did not know what to make of it. Paul, too, is silent ; so that 
we can be sure that the oldest tradition knew nothing of any 
stories of Jesus's birth. 

In ages past, long before the time of Christ, certain 
miracles were believed to have taken place, and we find these 
were of precisely the same nature as those recorded in the 
Bible. Numerous saviors were believed to have been born 
of virgins, to have died for the sins of mankind, to have 
risen again from the dead, and to have ascended into heaven. 
Thus not only are the Bible miracles scientifically impos- 
sible ; not only are they unsupported by anything approach- 
ing adequate evidence, but we find that they are not even 
original, but that they form part of ancient superstitions. 

Miracles introduce into human life an element of uncer- 
tainty of which complaint could justly be made. Moreover, 
if they occur only at the request and instance of certain per- 
sons, they would seem to introduce also a partiality of which 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 195 

men might more justly complain. If one blind man in Judea 
could have his eyes opened by a word, why not all the blind 
in Judea, in the empire, in the world? If the son of the 
widow of Nain was by a word brought back to life to dry 
his mother's tears, why would not the same word mend the 
broken hearts of all weeping mothers? And so of all the 
rest, the one man with a withered hand, the one demented 
woman, the one paralytic. Is it enough to say that these 
were only cases that came in his way when chance caused 
the occasion to serve? Does God's omnipotent goodness 
act only when accident or chance makes the occasion for it? 
Is He not Lord also of chance? 

Now, to my mind — and I would not presume to speak 
for any other — the obstinate difficulty in the way of believ- 
ing that miracles have actually happened, or do happen, is 
not scientific, and not philosophic, but ethical. God has 
seemingly so constituted the universe in which men find 
themselves that, as a very condition of living, they must 
know what to count upon. Only in a universe where cause 
and effect hold together can intelligence function at all. 
And what is of more consequence, only in such a universe 
can right and wrong have any meaning. 



190 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

Chapter XIV. 
The Unseen World 

THERE are some phases of thought into which it is 
all but impossible to gain real insight, questions that 
are as old as civilization and even as far back as his- 
tory goes, in all conditions of life. The answer seems to 
us yet infinitely remote, though they have been asked con- 
tinually through all the past history of man, and men will 
never cease from asking them as long as the human race en- 
dures; and will still be as far from solution as they ever 
were. There are some future experiences upon which man- 
kind is always speculating, and which yet can never become 
present experiences so long as we are what we are — those 
questions, I mean, which concern the destiny of man after 
death; the character of his journey to the undiscovered 
country, and the sort of life he will live when there. 

Some would have us cease from these unfruitful specula- 
tions, but it is very certain that man must change his nature 
before they will lose their fascination for him; and till he 
does so change, he can never read without sympathy the 
guesses which past generations of his kind have made toward 
the solution of the same problems. 

To those who have gone before, these questions have lost 
their interest, as ours will soon do for us. Whatever lot that 
new condition may hold in store, eternal pleasure or eternal 
pain, they have tried it now; and none have returned to re- 
veal the scene that is concealed by the dark curtain that has 
passed behind them. One thing is certain, as long as we 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 197 

remain here upon this earth, we must be something above, 
or below, humanity, if we refuse ever to let our thoughts 
wander toward the changes and chances of another life. 
There was a time once when one aspect, at any rate, of the 
future, its terror, was realized with intensity, and exercised 
an influence over life and conduct, such as are unknown in 
our day. Perhaps these times were out of the ordinary. 
But in our estimate of the middle ages we are, I think, apt 
to lay too much stress upon the force which faith had over 
the men of those days. There was on the one hand the 
orthodox teaching, and whenever the church moulded com- 
pletely the popular belief, this world was seen as if covered 
beneath a pall, and the next shrouded in still darker gloom. 
As the orthodox or monastic view of life was likewise the 
literary one, the picture of the world as it was drawn by 
the church has come down to us almost unrelieved by 
brighter colors. There was, however, another spirit at 
work, the spirit of the laity; and for laymen at least, what- 
ever priests might say to the contrary, life had still its pleas- 
ures, and in the indulgence of these, thoughts about the next 
world were then, as now, laid to rest. 

Beside the deeper course of the main stream of belief, 
this under current may be distinctly traced, a rivulet of an- 
cient paganism. We cannot overlook these elements in med- 
iaeval life. In truth we can never hear mentioned the term 
dark ages, without feeling as though a gross absurdity had 
come upon that age to obscure and dim the face of things 
and that our ancestors wandered about groping in ignorance 
and superstition. 

Where no knowledge could be gained from experience, 
man has been driven, in solving such a question as that of 



198 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

the character of our future life, to interpret the allegory of 
nature, and his interpretations have not varied very much 
from age to age. Wherefore it is that, as far back as we can 
test the belief of men, we find certain theories touching the 
fate of the soul after death, which represent, in the germ at 
least, the prevalent opinions of our own day, and out of 
some of which our opinions have arisen. 

Belief sprang up at once from the mere effort of language 
to give expression to the unseen. Casting about for a name 
lor the essential part of man, the soul of him, and using for 
the abstract conception such a physical notion as seemed 
least remote from the former, language at first identified 
this soul with the breath. Like the vital spark itself, the 
breath is seen to depart when the man dies, but whither has 
it gone? This is the first question concerning the home of 
the soul ; and the purely negative, purely scientific answer is 
but to confess ignorance, and to say that the breath has dis- 
appeared. The answer actually given advances a little 
way beyond this toward the beginning of a myth. The 
breath has gone to the unseen, or as the Greeks said — to 
Hades — translated Hell. 

Thus out of migration we have the beginning of a myth ; 
the spirit becomes something definite, and the place it has 
gone to is partly realized. This Home of the Dead, this 
unseen world, must needs be dark; and it is of course, nat- 
ural that there should be much confusion between the home 
of the living soul and that of the dead body, so that the 
former becomes more or less identified with the grave. 

In a more expanded sense the Home of the Dead may be 
thought of as a vast underground kingdom to which the 
grave is but the entry. It was always imagined that if the 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 199 

dead man ever did return to the upper world, he came 
through this passage and out of the grave's mouth, and ap- 
parently it was generally thought that he could return no 
other way. It was also deemed that for awhile the dead man 
lingered about the funeral mound ; thus soon after death the 
man's ghost might be seen, but not generally long after 
death. 

Along with the earliest traces of human burial, we find 
tokens of the custom of placing food and drink with the dead 
body. The object of this may have been to furnish the ghost 
with the means for beginning his journey to the underground 
kingdom, and so of hastening his departure from the neigh- 
borhood of living men ; for it is certain that there was nothing 
of which primitive man stood more in dread than the ap- 
pearance of a ghost. 

In the remains of the later stone age we find proofs that 
the departed were pacified by such like gifts of food and 
drink ; they were in these days further honored by the erec- 
tion of immense monumental tombs, which even now rep- 
resent the appearance of small hills. The pyramids of 
Egypt are a relic of the same custom of mound-raising among 
primitive men. Within the grave was placed the body of 
the hero, surrounded by implements of war and of the chase, 
food and drink, and also by dead captives and wives. It 
is impossible for us to know to a certainty what was the 
original intention of rites such as these, which continue quite 
late in the development of civilization. Was it supposed 
that the body itself came to life and required the food which 
was left for it in the grave before it arrived at its last home? 
Had it a journey to make to the underground abode? Was 
the food intended only for that intermediate condition of 
travel ? 



200 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

Before we have means of testing men's belief upon these 
points, the rites which might have expressed it have become 
in a great degree symbolical, and their simpler meaning has 
been lost. In contrast with all these myths stand those 
which after death send the soul upon a journey to some 
happy home of the departed, to a paradise which is gener- 
ally believed to be in the west. If the first are myths of 
hell, the second series may be fairly described as myths of 
heaven. Nor can it be clearly proved that the more cheer- 
ful view of the other world is of a later growth in time than 
the one which we have been describing, seeing the evidence 
which the Stone Age interments seem to offer upon this 
point. For if the dead man had need of his weapons of 
war, of his captives and his wives, his life to come could not 
have differed from his life here. And if among historic 
peoples, the earlier Hebrews were the exponents of the 
gloomy school, the most hopeful picture of the soul's future 
finds expression in the ritual service of the Egyptians. To 
come nearer home, among all those peoples with whom we 
are allied in blood, the European family of nations, we 
shall find the traces of a double belief, the belief on the one 
hand in death as a dim underground place, or as a devour- 
ing monster, and the contrasting belief in death as a journey 
made towards a new country where everything is better and 
happier than on earth. 

There is nothing distinctively Aryan in the notion of a 
journey of the soul after death. Every nation has possessed 
it, and almost every people moreover, has associated it with 
the travel of the sun to his setting. But there is something in 
this phase of belief which makes it, wherever it appears, 
more national and characteristic than the other creed touch- 
ing the underworld, and that is the necessity which its myth- 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 201 

ology is under of changing according to the geographical 
position of those who hold it. The paradise whither the 
soul was imagined traveling was certainly in one sense an- 
other world, but it was not so in the sense in which we use 
that term. The ancient paradise was in no way distinctly 
separated in thought from the earth on which men lived ; and 
the way to it was always supposed to lie somewhere in this 
visible world. In the later Hebrew thought the abode of 
all the righteous was supposed to be above the canopy that 
covered the earth, where God was supposed to rule and 
reign, and if they met with his favor they would meet him 
there face to face. 

Therefore the idea of heaven varied according to men's 
outlook over this earth. The Egyptian, for example, saw 
the sun set behind a trackless desert which he had never 
crossed, and never desired to cross while alive. Beyond this 
desert, it was his belief, lay the twilight land upon the left 
bank of his sacred Nile, while the cities of the living were 
upon the right bank ; and so the Egyptian Book of the Dead 
gives us a picture of the dead man's journey, in which all 
the geographical features of Egypt reappear. The ritual 
shows the departed twice ferried across a sacred river of 
death, traveling through the dark land of Apap, ever ad- 
vancing toward the sun, light breaking upon him the while, 
till he comes to the judgment hall of Osiris — Osiris being 
the sun which has set. Last of all we see him walking into 
the sun itself, or absorbed into the essence of the deity. 
The Aryans used the same imagery, with variations of local 
coloring. In both myths there is the same childlike confusion 
of thought between the subjective and the objective; be- 
tween the position of the mythmaker and that of the phe- 
nomenon out of which he weaves his story. Because towards 



202 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

sunset the sun grows dim and the world too, it is imagined 
that the sun has now reached a dim twilight place, such as 
the Egyptians pictured in their region of Apap upon the 
border land of the earth. 

But when the sun has quite disappeared, then inconsistent- 
ly it is said that he has gone to a land which is his proper 
home, whence his light, whether by day or night, is never 
withdrawn. The twilight region is the land of death; the 
bright land beyond is the home of the blessed. Such are the 
general notions which among a primitive people correspond 
to our Hell and our Heaven. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 203 

Chapter XV 
Heaven and Hell 

1 BELIEVE in the love of God rightly understood, and 
received, but to comprehend absolutely the love of 
God is beyond all human expression, and I doubt if 
it can be fully uttered even by God Himself, so we would 
be able to understand; though the whole universe is meant 
to be a revelation of it. A proper sense of the love of Goa 
would make life most sweet and desirable, would make 
every relation of life, parentage, and childhood, birth, mar- 
riage and death, youth, manhood and old age, a great gift 
of God full of all brightness and blessing. Man is specially 
made to love God, and the whole universe is based upon his 
infinite goodness, and his love fully received would make 
human life beautiful as the flowers, radiant as sunset, strong 
as the everlasting hills, and rapturous as the melody of the 
sweetest songs. Man's life may yet be all this, and more, 
for the all sufficient reason that God is love. 

But before all this happens, all the world with all its 
varied forms of religion, creeds and dogmas, will have to 
undergo a mighty change. At the rate the Christian world 
has been progressing in scientific knowledge, and proper un- 
derstanding of the laws of the universe, and the relation that 
man stands to his Maker, these creeds and dogmas will long 
since have passed away and been forgotten. 

The steady advancing progress of the race in all scientific 
knowledge, and the unfolding of the perceptions of the hu- 
man mind, will eventually attain that proper understanding 



204 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

of those seeming mysteries that have beclouded the minds of 
men during all the past, and still continued until the present 
time. 

One of the most erroneous teachings of the churches that 
has been instrumental in hardening men's hearts against God 
and has veiled from them his beautiful goodness, is the teach- 
ing of endless torment of the wicked, and which remains still 
the doctrine of many churches. Dr. Carter said this dread- 
ful dogma, distinction from divine and, therefore, reasonable 
punishment, he believes to be without any foundation in the 
scriptures, rightly interpreted in common sense or right feel- 
ing, in all our knowledge of God, in all our information 
as to man's origin, history, character, or destiny, or in our 
slowly acquired ideas of the nature and wisdom of punish- 
ment in general. The greatest miracle, to my mind, is to 
think that any intelligent and enlightened person living in 
this age of reason can believe it. Could any imagination 
reproduce all the terrors, cruel dismay, and dreadful tortures 
that have flowed from this dogma it would be an incon- 
ceivably appalling vision, a great anguish of the centuries, 
a needless sum of overwhelming misery. 

He believes it to be on the whole the most pestilential 
error that was ever propagated, sufficient of itself to make 
man's life utterly miserable and to veil the whole creation 
in sackcloth. I believe that neither war, famine, nor pes- 
tilence has caused so much misery in the world as this single 
dogma, with its terror, despair, insanity, and suicide, and 
beneath all, its constant brooding horror. No malignant 
demon could devise anything more dreadful and we should 
be slow to impute it to the goodness of God. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 205 

We have been long engaged in modifying and diminishing 
cur punishments, with only the most happy results. Is man 
more just than God. 'Tis said that when life is ended here: 
the spirit is borne to a distant sphere. That it visits its 
earthly home no more, nor looks on the haunts it loved be- 
fore. But why should the bodiless soul be sent far off to 
a long banishment? 

The world of intelligent and scientific men has utterly 
rejected the idea of endless torment. Why should not the 
church free itself from the shame of perpetuating this re- 
morseless cruelty ? The dogma of endless torment is an old 
rotten and abandoned relic of the past, that has rolled on 
the ocean of time far too long, leaving a track of disaster 
and death behind it. 

Modern science has profoundly modified these old tra- 
ditional ideas, which it daily renders more and more sub- 
servient to the intelligence of this age of reason and modern 
thought. The wonderful discoveries that have been made 
in the past, have already achieved much in changing the 
views of many, and we expect greater changes in the future. 
They have laid bare to our dazzled eyes some of nature's 
most jealously guarded secrets, and thus have altered in 
many essential points the notions which the human race have 
formed concerning the place of man in the universe. 

That same abounding faith which our fathers placed in 
the judgments of eminent theologians, is today accorded to 
the authoritative luminaries of science, when they attempt to 
solve questions beyond the sphere of material observation. 
Science, in a word, is the one authority from which we are 
willing to accept a solution of the great problems that have 
vexed mankind ever since the dawn of intellectual conscious- 



206 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

ness, and it is possible that it may some day be able to fur- 
nish an explanation to the diverse views held by many con- 
scientious people, that will be incontrovertible. But that day 
is still so exceedingly remote that we are unable to forecast. 

The larger portion of the Christian churches still believe 
in the infallibility of the old traditions of the Bible, written 
in the long ago ages of the past, by men of ignorance and 
superstition, unacquainted with the laws of the universe, and 
astronomical science. Astronomy reveals to us the im- 
mensity of space, and the innumerable worlds that dot the 
heavenly vault, and shows to us the insignificant place which 
our earth occupies in the universe. 

The writers of olden times asserted that the end of the 
earth inevitably involved the end of the entire universe, and 
they also described heaven and hell, as having very definite 
localities. According to ancient belief, hell was a place 
of physical torments, an ocean of fire buried in the depths of 
the earth. On the other hand, heaven was also a definite 
place situated above the clouds, above the firmament, that 
vast solid vault set with countless stars which forms the 
throne of God. This question of the ancients, remained un- 
shaken so long as the earth was regarded as the center of the 
universe, and man was thought to be the only possible crea- 
tion of all intelligent beings. But the time came when sci- 
ence opened the heavenly vault, and revealed new worlds 
to our astonished gaze, and earth no longer held its un- 
questioned primacy. The sun itself was but a puny star, 
flung promiscuously among a million others in the same neb- 
ula, and whirled like them by some superior power toward 
an unknown goal. 



EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 207 

But this vast number of suns, and this vast host of worlds 
which already staggers the imagination and in which our 
earth is less than an atom, this nebula is not all; it is but a 
mere element in a wider universe whose unsounded depths 
enfold other systems as limitless and grand. In endless 
space wherein the worlds are sown like chance grains of 
sand, vainly do you seek for those abodes of punishment and 
reward destined for those dead to earthly life, and which 
were supposed to constitute the final terminus of creation. 
Vanished they would seem, forever, that material hell and 
purgatory which lay hidden in the bowels of the earth; 
vanished the supposed high heaven where the ancients be- 
lieved the good would spend eternity in bliss, which was 
builded on the vault of the firmament; and in the minds of 
many theologians, and many believers too, a new interpre- 
tation of doctrine has succeeded the old; heaven and hell 
are no longer localized places, but rather states of the im- 
material soul, happy or unhappy. 

God, who is spirit, fills all space without being localized 
to any determinate spot; hence likewise the souls can be 
admitted everywhere to the contemplation of His infinite 
perfections, which constitutes supreme beatitude, and heaven 
no longer needs to be physically realized. Let us add that 
it astronomy leads us to reject a material heaven and hell, 
v/hose place we do not see in the physical world, it throws 
no obstacle in the way of there being real places, situated 
in a more subtile plane of matter, such as the ether, where 
they are consequently withdrawn from our means of ob- 
servation. 



208 EVOLUTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 

Such a conception forces itself upon us if we admit that 
the soul carries its fluid-like envelope with it, and conse- 
quently always occupies a determinate place. Heaven and 
hell may retain their objective existence, although vanishing 
from the physical plane with which we are now acquainted. 

The End. 



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